The Charlotte News
Saturday, May 30, 1959
ONE EDITORIAL
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Geneva that Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko had accused the Western powers this date of subversive activities in Berlin and had demanded an end to their occupation of West Berlin. Western diplomats said that Mr. Gromyko had spoken for 40 minutes in the Big Four foreign ministers conference, formally presenting Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's demand, made six months earlier, that the West agree to make Berlin a "free city". Some informants said that Mr. Gromyko had hinted at a possible compromise over Berlin, saying that if the Big Four put their minds to the problem, they might be able to find an acceptable solution. Secret talks with Mr. Gromyko had thus far failed to remove the Berlin issue as a barrier to a summit meeting. But Western officials thought it was likely that Mr. Gromyko would obtain new instructions from Moscow before the foreign ministers conference would end. Less than 48 hours after entering secret negotiations, the foreign ministers were headed back this date to the semi-public stage in the Palace of Nations, at the request of the Soviets. Secretary of State Christian Herter, British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd and French Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville expected a new demand from Mr. Gromyko for Western troops to evacuate West Berlin and to make it a neutralized "free city". The Western powers had repeatedly emphasized that they had no intention of doing so and American officials said that they assumed that Mr. Gromyko wanted to pose the Soviet plan for the future of Berlin, as several days earlier, he had stated his intent to introduce it soon.
This 91st Memorial Day had been marked by prayer and play, as the nation paid homage to its dead of five major wars and the season of beach and summer resorts got underway. From Arlington National Cemetery across the Potomac from Washington to Hawaii, services had been held by veterans and other patriot groups as well as by relatives of those who had died for their country. Hundreds of parades celebrated the occasion. In keeping with tradition, the day marked the exodus of urban dwellers to the seashore, country and mountain areas. Highways, trains and planes were crowded with holiday travelers. At Arlington, memorial services had been held in the semicircular stone-benched Amphitheater, where President Eisenhower's wreath was to be positioned at the Tomb of the Unknowns by Sumner Whittier, administrator of Veterans Affairs. The President planned a quiet day at the White House, with no formal activities scheduled. At Rindge, N.H., the Daughters of the Confederacy and the Daughters of Union Veterans had joined in placing wreaths on an open-air altar overlooking a vista of forest and rolling hills. The President had sent a wreath for the occasion and each of the 50 governors had sent a single white rose. At Long Beach, Calif., the Navy American Legion Post prepared wreaths to toss onto the sea in tribute to the Navy war dead. In west Los Angeles, Girl Scouts decorated 30,000 graves in the Veterans Administration Cemetery. In Honolulu, children joined veteran groups in placing leis on graves of 17,000 World War II and Korean War dead. At Hyde Park, N.Y., Senator Lyndon Johnson addressed memorial exercises at the grave of President Franklin Roosevelt. Also in Honolulu, the Navy remembered Pearl Harbor dead in ceremonies astride the sunken hulk of the battleship USS Arizona, where the bodies of more than 1,000 officers and men remained entombed in its hull as a tragic reminder of the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941. At Unity, N.H., that state honored its unknown soldier, soldier No. 73, who had volunteered to fight in the Revolution only to become ill and die as his comrades had marched into Vermont where they had held back British troops in the Battle of Bennington, the unknown soldier having been one of the recruits mustered by General John Stark when he had arrived in Unity on July 30, 1777. Across the Atlantic, taps had been played on the hill at Château-Thierry in France, where an American graveyard of World War I overlooked the Marne. Americans and British held an observance on Friday, a day early, at the Whitehall cenotaph, placing a wreath at the British national memorial and then praying in St. Margaret's, a little church familiar to thousands of American servicemen.
Thus far during the Memorial Day weekend, which had begun at 6:00 p.m. the previous evening and would continue through midnight on Sunday, there had been 56 traffic fatalities, six by drowning, and none in the miscellaneous category. The National Safety Council said that the death toll was running well ahead of the previous year's Memorial Day holiday and they asked every driver to remember their responsibilities not only for their own safety but also for that of others. The Council estimated that there would be 40 million travelers on the roads during the weekend and that traffic accidents might cause 260 deaths. During the early hours of the weekend, 15 persons had lost their lives in four separate collisions. There was increased enforcement of traffic regulations by authorities.
In Washington, it was reported that the two nonchalant space monkeys who had flown into outer space for 15 minutes on Thursday and returned safely to splash down in the ocean had faced the public this date, as newsmen and photographers confronted Able and Baker at a conference, to find out what their thoughts were. The two female monkeys had survived a 1,500-mile trip into space but exhibited a ho-hum attitude on Friday night when they arrived in Washington. While the newsmen, photographers, and military personnel watched them exit a four-engine transport, the monkeys played and munched on food inside their metal cages. The pilot of the transport, a Navy lieutenant, said that their seeming indifference had just been coyness and he added that during the flight, Baker, the smaller of the two simians, had played in the cockpit and posed for pictures at the controls. He said that she was actually a ham. Before the public exhibition, the monkeys had undergone more important scrutiny, as soon after their arrival, doctors had begun medical checkups to see how well they had fared in their space trip in the nosecone of a Jupiter missile. The doctors hoped to gain important insight toward maintaining the health of the seven human Mercury astronauts when they would be launched into orbit around the earth as part of the NASA space program. The transport which returned the monkeys had also brought back the capsules in which they had made their space flight and they were taken to the Army ballistic missile laboratory for study. The nosecone carrying the capsules with the monkeys was recovered near Antigua Island in the Atlantic Ocean after the missile had been fired from Cape Canaveral. Following the medical checkups and exhibition, the monkeys would return to their laboratories in Washington to live in retirement. They should be kept under close observation, as undoubtedly, they will seek to make profit from their enterprise by sharing some of their secrets with the Rooskies. You just cannot trust those perfidious simians.
In New Orleans, it was reported that tropical storm Arlene, after hanging around the Gulf of Mexico overnight, was expected to blow into the west Louisiana coastal area this night with 50 mph winds. The season's first tropical disturbance was located early in the morning about 150 miles south of Lafayette, La., and was expected to begin moving slowly in a northwesterly direction this date, would then turn more northerly, according to the latest advisory, and increase a little in its forward speed. The Weather Bureau had predicted that its center would reach the west Louisiana coast by early this night. It had remained stationary the previous night and a Navy hurricane-hunter aircraft from Jacksonville, Fla., had maintained a watch on the storm during the night. The Bureau said that the storm was not expected to change much in size and intensity. Rough seas were reported all along the Louisiana coast. The highest winds thus far were estimated at 50 mph within 50 miles of the storm's center, and in some heavier squalls to the north of the center. Grand Isle, La., about 40 miles south of New Orleans, reported 40 mph winds and tides 2 feet above normal at midnight. Gale warnings had been displayed from Galveston, Tex., to Grand Isle for winds between 35 and 50 mph, with warnings calling for rough seas and tides between two and four feet above normal. A small craft warning was issued by the Bureau from Galveston to Pensacola, Fla. Arlene had become a storm on Thursday in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico and since it had first been spotted, had changed directions several times, with the Bureau indicating that there was little likelihood that it would develop into a hurricane.
In Poplarville, Miss., it was reported that the circuit judge who would have tried Mack Charles Parker for an alleged rape of a white pregnant woman, Mr. Parker having been the victim of a lynching after several masked and hooded men had taken him from the Poplarville jail and then murdered him near Bogalusa, La., said the previous day that he had decided not to comment on the decision of Mississippi Governor J. P. Coleman to retain the FBI report on the case until the regular session of the grand jury the following November. In the end, no one would ever be prosecuted for the murder. Attorney General William Rogers had recently indicated that the FBI was withdrawing from the case because no Federal statutes had been implicated.
In Burlington, N.C., it was reported that a 56-year old white woman had told police that a black man, wearing gloves and armed with two pistols and a knife, had raped her in her bedroom early this date. Police said that the woman had telephoned in an almost hysterical condition shortly before 2:00 a.m. and reported the alleged attack in her home about six blocks from the downtown Burlington business district, in a white neighborhood on the fringes of a black section. A doctor had examined her and said that she had no external bruises, but showed evidence of sexual relations. She had been home alone at the time of the alleged attack and her husband, who ran a nightclub, had come home shortly afterward.
Bill Hughes of The News reports of a disagreement between North Carolina railroads and the State Highway Commission which had stalled two projects regarding the extension of Interstate 85, the superhighway bypass around Charlotte and Gastonia. Contracts for construction of underpasses were being withheld until the Commission and the railroads could work out an agreement on maintenance of the completed structures. Railroads had refused to sign the usual maintenance agreements sharing the cost of upkeep on the underpasses. Completion of the next major link of the highway would not be delayed, provided the agreement could be reached soon.
Ann Sawyer of The News reports that members of the "hungry kids" study committee and City School Board officials were still working together in an attempt to provide more free lunches to needy hungry schoolchildren, that at a meeting the previous afternoon, they had discussed a plate lunch for junior and senior high schools, reduced labor costs, and a reduced lunch cost for indigent children. The committee was not suggesting a rigid plate lunch but one where a student could have a choice between two entrées, four vegetables, and two desserts. Junior and senior high schools presently had a cafeteria plan and if they were to change to a plate lunch, they could receive a Federal subsidy on the number of meals served. School officials said, however, that since they received a subsidy on milk sold in the junior and senior high school program, the subsidy might not be much larger. It had been determined that the responsibility for feeding the hundreds of needy schoolchildren at lunch rested with the schools under terms of a contract which the schools had signed to receive the Federal commodities and subsidies for the lunchroom program.
In New York, Howard Brodie, an artist-author of the "Power of Faith" series which would start in the newspaper on June 13, reported on the tour he had taken of the country recently to find outstanding examples of faith by which Americans lived, this date reporting on a story from one of New York's most overcrowded sections, having visited with former toughs several times to obtain their stories and two on-the-spot sketches. He indicates that the subway express rattled to a stop on the elevated tracks in the Bronx and he walked to the shadowed street, passing a Spanish nightclub and coming to the little Damascus Christian Church on East 162nd Street, climbing two fights flights of stairs and passing a homemade mural of Christ's hands in prayer with the lettering, "MI CASA", above them. When he entered the office, he found four cots, with a young man asleep on one of them, as another young man directed him up another flight of steps to a brightly tinted apartment. There, a female minister greeted him, speaking with a Spanish accent, asking him to remain for dinner and their youth meeting, suggesting that he go down and meet some of the young people. He returned to the office dormitory and found that the sleeping young man had awakened and was putting on his glasses. He said he had gotten his glasses in jail, said that he had begun taking heroin when he was 14 and that he had paid $25 per day for a fix. When asked how he had changed, he identified a person named Joe with whom he had grown up and had started smoking marijuana, then had gone to heroin. He said he lost track of Joe a year earlier and then saw him on the street one day, hardly recognizing him, having changed from a skeleton to a "new person", telling him that he had received his faith at the church. So he had come to the church and the first couple of times, had still been hooked on heroin. He received his strength from faith and had kicked the habit, felt he was never alone at present, that Christ was always with him, that he had the feeling now that people cared for him. He had noticed Mr. Brodie looking at his monkey-wrench knife on the desk, and he said that it had been his tool, club and knife, but he had given it to the minister. As he slipped on his coat, Mr. Brodie had noticed a button on his lapel which said: "CHRISTO ES MI GUIA", meaning "Christ is my guide". The soft sounds of a guitar had come from a nearby room in which he found a young Mexican minister strumming a ballad. Beside him was a former leader of both the Scorpions and Dragons gangs, with a combined membership of 500 members. Mr. Brodie knew of his knife wounds from a rumble and asked to see them. The Puerto Rican did not speak English but understood him and stripped to his waist, pointing to 14 scarred slashes on his stomach, arm and back. He had lain near death from the wounds several months earlier in a hospital and it was while there that he had gained his faith. Spiritual strength had been added to his physical strength, having been a Golden Gloves boxer. He had brought 25 of his friends over to his way of thinking, saying in Spanish that "Christ is my leader now." Another young man entered the room who had been a leader of a club of more than 400 members and also had formed a female organization. He also had changed and told Mr. Brodie about it, saying that he had never laughed and had always been mean, never thought that Christ could like him, but then found faith and now would stand up for Christ forever. He said, when asked, that his group had rumbled with the other leader's gang, but now they were on the same side, all fighting for Christ, that faith was more fun, as God filled their cups.
On the editorial page, "History with a Touch of Mythology", an editorial book review of The Tragedy of American Diplomacy by William Appleman Williams, indicates that in 1947, somewhere in the Midwest, a Senator had reached a crescendo in his speech, saying: "We are going to lift Shanghai up and up, ever up, until it is just like Kansas City." It finds that it was amusing only to the random American who took Americana with a dash of irony.
The country had been one of wilderness-beaters, Indian-fighters, scourges of French or English or Spanish colonialists who would have controlled it, a nation of "Manifest Destiny". The author of the book being reviewed, Dr. Williams, argued that if that were understood, it ought be understood how it had led the nation to its present impasse with the Communists, that the road to the impasse had led by way of America's Manifest Destiny from the work of beating back a New World wilderness to the "wilderness" across the seas. He found that the "tragedy" of American diplomacy lay in the frustration of the country's ideals of conquest and the following failure. It had not raised Shanghai "up and up" and the relatively minor failure with Shanghai was dwarfed by the vaster failure to convince the Soviet Union and Communist China to join the uplift club.
The book, it finds, was a delicate blend of the relatively prosaic touch of an historian with the lighter touch of a psychologist of culture and an examiner of myths. The author also assumed with success the role of seer. "Like the aged prophet Tiresias in Sophoclean tragedy, of which he is clearly a student, he takes the reluctant part of truth-teller. America is his Oedipus. We cannot see where our tragedy lies and what sin of pride has led us to a fateful hour." He had found that the tragedy of the country had its basis in the belief that its Manifest Destiny possessed worldwide validity. President Woodrow Wilson, who had embodied the fundamental national pride perhaps more than any American, believed that every country ought have "self-determination" and that America ought to help in that regard. Yet it was President Wilson who typically initiated an unsuccessful intervention against the Bolsheviks in Russia. Dr. Williams had said: "On the one hand, [our national ideal] defined helping people in terms of making them more like Americans. This subverted its ideal of self-determination. On the other hand, it asserted and acted upon the necessity of overseas economic expansion for its own material prosperity. But … [thereby] the ability of other people to develop and act upon their own patterns of development was further undercut."
It indicates that anyone who questioned the validity of placing the country's current sense of frustration in international affairs in the traditional framework of tragedy needed only to recall Aristotle, in which tragedy was not the doom of an evil or immoral hero, evoking no pity or fear, but rather the failure of an essentially good person who was not too good to have a fatal flaw in character. "America was not the victim of a simple failure, but rather was plagued by the infinitely more subtle paradox of the failure of success," according to the professor. The success was that of the present in which the country had forced a stalemate with the worldwide revolution emanating from the Soviets. The country had "quarantined" that revolution and present foreign policy appeared to aim at "the traditional objective of the 1890's: Stabilize the world in a pro-American equilibrium."
He had found that ever since Secretary of State John Hay had developed the Open Door policy with respect to China over 50 years earlier, the nation had labored to inscribe its own perimeters around the world. In China, Secretary Hay's policy had challenged the theory of colonialism prevalent elsewhere in the West, with its "sweet spheres of influence". If those spheres of influence were abolished, the country had said, then everyone would have self-determination. But there had been a fateful, if silent, proviso, that being that self-determination could not be revolutionary in the sense that it could be contrary to the political or economic interests of the U.S. The instinct of the nation had been to trade and build markets, to lift the various Shanghais "up and up". In sum, he was saying that the U.S. emerged from the 19th Century "isolation", driven by Manifest Destiny, which the country believed valid worldwide, armed with a crusading zeal to help other nations achieve what the U.S. had achieved. Inevitably, the country was a market-seeking nation because of material overflow, and the Open Door, designed to make those markets safe, had actually thrown the country violently against other national interests which varied widely, undermining the country's ideals.
It finds that following the professor's reasoning thus far, several historical revisions occurred, one being that suddenly all of the internationalists, both Democratic and Republican, had closed ranks because they accepted a deeply identical strategy. The elements of the strategy were the Open Door, the refusal to settle on any terms but the country's own with respect to the Communist Revolution. Disagreements had occurred over tactics but not over the grand strategy. Between the "trade not aid" slogan and the Marshall Plan "giveaway", which it purportedly attacked, there was little to choose. Both were at bottom aimed at keeping the world "open", to secure the widest possible expansion of the perimeters without any compromise with revolutions.
Averell Harriman and Harry Truman were made by the author to lie down with John Foster Dulles and Herbert Hoover, all being self-professed "internationalists" and all iron men when it came to the Soviets. Senator Truman, for example, had spoken in the Senate before Pearl Harbor of alternating American aid between Hitler and Stalin to make Stalin emerge "an exhausted victor", thus more pliable to America's Open Door policy. President Truman had also led, as World War II had ended, "the rapid revival of the analogy between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which became a central feature of America's analysis of the postwar world." Mr. Harriman's rigidities could be traced to an ill-fated attempt to corner the world manganese market, at which he was stumped by Russia.
There was also revision of the much-revised American ideology, "isolationism". By the nature of his assumptions, Dr. Williams could muster an uncommon sympathy for it and did not see isolationism in the 1920's and 1930's as a blind tug to hold America back from "responsibilities" in the world, but as a perceptive insight into the potential "tragedy" of American diplomacy. Senator William Borah of Idaho, much-maligned by the internationalists and who had once made Secretary of State Cordell Hull weep in FDR's office, had become a truth-teller. His dissent from the grand strategy of "the American Century" had derived from a fear that Americans believed too much and knew too little about revolution. Senator Borah's comment on Russian non-recognition in 1925 had been "strangely prophetic", according to the professor. He ventured that, "So long as you have 150 million people outlawed in a sense, it necessarily follows that you cannot have peace.".
It finds that there were countless fascinating byways and paradoxes in the book, all of which ought be sifted and weighed by everyone concerned about American foreign policy. One could question whether the country's fervent belief in the Open Door relied so much on market-seeking, as the author contended, or one could question whether the Open Door was so unique when considered against French or British colonialism. "Still, the byways of argument he invites us to follow are ingenious and challenging," but not half so as his conclusion that America ought outlive its tragedy by ridding itself of the old Open Door and embracing "an Open Door for revolutions". In India and countless embattled states, a policy of "helping other peoples achieve their aspirations in their own way" had a compelling appeal.
Drew Pearson indicates that tension was so taut around the Pentagon that Secretary of the Army Wilber Brucker might be fired based on the dispute over missiles. The Secretary, a former Governor of Michigan and a potent power in the Republican Party, had become so immersed in the Army feud with the Air Force regarding missiles that he had authorized two "Nickerson-type" memos on the subject of missiles and had given 12 public speeches between May 11 and May 16. That might be more than Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy could take. The issue was the same basic one which had caused Col. John Nickerson to be court-martialed, namely the distribution of a memo spelling out the Army's demand that it share in building missiles. Mr. Brucker was now fighting for the Army Nike-Hercules.
One 12-page memo which Mr. Brucker had sent to Senators was already publicized, and had made the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, quite angry, considering it an attempt to undercut his Committee which already had taken a stand against the Army's Nike-Hercules. A second memo had not yet leaked, but the column had obtained a copy. Dated May 19, it was addressed to Secretary McElroy from Secretary Brucker, urging that the former hold up production of the Air Force Bomarc missile until the "entire United States air defense effort for the 1960-1970 era" could be reviewed.
Both the Army's Nike-Hercules missile and the Air Force's Bomarc were aimed at protecting American cities from enemy supersonic bombers. The Army proposed to shoot down bombers over or near American cities. The Air Force claimed that such would allow enemy bombers to get too close, and had designed the Bomarc to shoot down enemy bombers in a given geographic area. When the weapon systems evaluation group had tested both missiles, however, it was found that 65 percent of the enemy's planes got by the Nike-Hercules compared to only 15 percent by the Bomarc. That had caused the Senate Armed Services Committee to curtail Army production of the Nike-Hercules and had also caused Canada to choose the Bomarc.
Mr. Pearson notes that some critics, such as Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri, had claimed that both systems were weak and that the country must strike at the enemy before its planes got near U.S. cities.
Joseph Alsop, in Geneva, indicates that in Budapest, the isolated diplomatic colony had been buzzing the previous week "because the masseuse of one of the diplomatic ladies had complained rather bitterly about the boredom and waste of time of 'these endless lectures about atom bombs.'" That clue had led to the discovery that an intensive, though somewhat academic course in atomic air raid precautions, had been given to the whole city, block by block, and in that way, the Soviet puppet government in Hungary, though not directly involved, was taking the Berlin crisis far more seriously than the Western governments which were most directly involved.
He finds that in Budapest there was far too much evidence of total disbelief in the West's protestations of "firmness" on the Berlin issue. Mr. Alsop had been asked by high and low officials how he thought the conference in Geneva would turn out and his stock reply had been that Nikita Khrushchev did not appear likely to fight a war for Berlin and that President Eisenhower was ready to fight rather than abandon Berlin, and that a moderate accommodation thus seemed likely. That statement was usually greeted with total incredulity.
He indicates that the weakened old Hungarian Foreign Minister, Cik, was all but about to burst into open laughter at the suggestion that the President was sincere about "not giving an inch". The retiring Soviet Ambassador to Hungary, Gromov, whose street name in Budapest was "pogromov", demonstrated a grinning attitude. And another Soviet bloc diplomat, who had been alarmed rather than incredulous, had asked: "If your President means what he's said, why does he not behave as though he meant it?"
He suggests that maybe the same doubts about the President's purposes did not exist at higher levels, with Mr. Gromyko and Mr. Khrushchev, and that his chance contacts with puppet foreign ministers and Soviet ambassadors were not decisive evidence that the President was regarded as a faker within the Kremlin. But what Mr. Alsop had seen and heard in Budapest was at least enough to prove that the Kremlin might think that the President was faking, and even if there was only a small chance that the Kremlin had made that misjudgment, it was grave.
Back home, people were reported to be bored by the Berlin crisis and the Geneva conference, as Mr. Khrushchev brandished hydrogen bombs and threatened to take independent action in Berlin about once per week. But the President did not seem to take Mr. Khrushchev seriously and so no one else took him seriously. He indicates that it was just that way of not seeming to take the Berlin crisis seriously which might be causing or could in the future cause a desperately grave error of judgment in the Kremlin.
In Geneva, the Western diplomats and newspapermen had settled down comfortably for what was called the "waiting game", waiting calmly until the moment when Mr. Gromyko would open a new and more fruitful phase of the conference by revealing the basis on which the Soviets really hoped to do business with the West. He indicates that one wondered, however, whether the pleasant waiting and delightful surroundings might not provide the Soviets with an impression of Western complacency or even Western softness. He finds nothing more dangerous than being in a hurry in negotiations with the Soviets, but being interminably amiable about an interminable waste of time could also be a mistake.
Mr. Gromyko's demeanor to the present time had convinced the wisest Western analysts that Mr. Khrushchev did not intend to push the Berlin crisis to extremes. Mr. Alsop says that he was also convinced that Mr. Khrushchev did not mean to risk a war over Berlin. The Budapest evidence which he had seen and heard regarding Mr. Khrushchev's intentions was as an encouraging sign as the opinion in Budapest of the President's intentions was discouraging.
He poses the question whether the appearance of Western complacency, the absence of Western military preparations, the failure to disturb the Western dependents in Berlin might all combine to persuade Mr. Khrushchev that he could go pretty far without any actual risk of war regarding Berlin, finding it an anxious question which would remain so at least until Mr. Gromyko decided to end the waiting game.
Doris Fleeson indicates that Mrs. Clare Williams, the assistant chairman of the RNC, had introduced herself on the national stage with the injudicious prediction that the South would vote Republican in 1960 because it liked the Republican civil rights policy better than that of the Democrats. Mrs. Williams had praised the "moderation" of her party on civil rights and said that the Democrats, headed by DNC chairman Paul Butler, had no intention of "taking things slowly".
The "Negro press" of the large cities of the key states, where elections were won and lost, had, as expected, given full publicity to those remarks.
Republican spokesmen had suggested that Mrs. Williams was only learning her new job with all of its national angles and ought be allowed a mistake or two, admitting that the story did not help and were glad that it was May, 1959, instead of a year later. It was also said that Mrs. Williams had been doing a good job of organizing and possibly had not quite grasped all the nuances of policy. It was denied at Republican headquarters that the party would fall behind the opposition on devotion to civil rights, true of its presidential probabilities, either Vice-President Nixon or Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York.
Yet, she indicates, it might also be true that the South would have genuine importance in the pre-convention effort to determine whether those two men would oppose one another for the nomination and could conceivably show how much of an open struggle there would be if both sought it. For despite the fact that the South would have a very minor place in the election of a Republican nominee for the presidency, its delegations at the convention would have a third of the votes, and the history of the disposition of those votes at conventions and in pre-convention campaigns had often been a sordid one.
The Southern delegations had provided the drama of the Taft-Eisenhower contest of 1952 when a genuine grassroots enthusiasm for General Eisenhower had upset the orthodox arrangements of the late Senator Robert Taft from Ohio with the old-time leaders of Southern Republicanism. But nothing like that was in prospect for 1960. The Republicans of the South were offering a fair share of the same new faces which were appearing prominently in the political spectrum everywhere. Its new leaders had not had the help which they had a right to expect from the White House, either in patronage or prestige. But some of them had, nevertheless, made real advances in their states and were trying to capitulate on the political potential of the "New South" with its rapid industrialization and social changes.
Such men would doubtless seek to express more assiduously the sentiment in their areas than some of their cynical predecessors. But that portion of the convention votes was a tempting prize, one much easier to obtain in advance than the delegations from areas with more political dynamism.
Recently, a regional conference of Southern Republican leaders had taken place in Florida. New York state chairman Judson Morhouse had happened by to pay his respects and to suggest that it was not yet time for the party to commit itself to a single presidential aspirant, and within hours, the Vice-President, who was vacationing in Florida, had dropped by to shake hands. The South had responded with compliments. As long as its Republicans did not commit themselves, it was certain that Governor Rockefeller was not out of the running. She suggests that when they did act, it might be very revealing.
A letter from two members of the League of Women Voters of Charlotte indicates that the previous December the League had voted unanimously to work for the adoption and use of voting machines in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County as part of their local program. The first effort had been in 1951 when the League had arranged to have the Automatic Voting Machine Co. of Jamestown, N.Y., bring a machine to Charlotte for demonstration. It had been displayed in the auditorium of Ivey's Department Store and demonstrated by League members. Over 300 people had tried it at that time, including members of the City Council and the County Commission, and all had been impressed. The machine had again been displayed in 1952 in the lobby of the Selwyn Hotel and again the reaction had been favorable. In 1954, a machine had been demonstrated by League members at the fairgrounds during fair week and many hundreds of people had tried it and were impressed. The same year, the automatic voting machine company had sent a representative to Charlotte at the request of the League to make a savings and costs survey, with the 1952 elections used as a basis. They had found that the estimated savings per election would be more than $3,500 and per year more than $12,300. The cost of the machines could be amortized over 19 years. On December 10, 1958, the League had arranged a demonstration of a machine by representatives of the Shoup Voting Machine Corp. of Canton, O., performed at a meeting of the League in the Wachovia Bank Building, and again members of the City Council and the County Commission had been invited. For three days afterward, the machine was placed in the mezzanine at Belk's Department Store and demonstrated by League members, having had an enthusiastic reception. During the 1952 general election, 78,000 people had voted out of a registered 90,000, the largest voter participation in the history of the county, and on that basis, an estimate of machines needed would be about 160 for the entire county at $1,800 each, or a total of $288,000. The city's share for 33 precincts would be a little over two-thirds or about 100 machines, for a total of about $198,000, amortized at the rate of $10,421 per year over 19 years. They urge that an item be included in the new budget for the City to purchase enough machines to service all precincts.
A letter writer says she was sickened by the attitudes of the state and Federal governments. "Where we once had a government of the people and for the people, we now have a people of the government and for the government." She finds that one of the "progressive (or regressive)" members of the Senate had just proposed a bill to require corporations to withhold taxes from dividends paid to stockholders, and that the State Legislature now wanted to make some quick and easy money by instituting a state withholding tax. She says that she worked for a small company with few employees and while the time she spent each month on Federal withholding and Social Security forms was small compared to the time spent at larger companies, she nevertheless resented it because it was up to the individuals to pay their own taxes and up to the government to see that it was done, that it was "unfair to expect business to play feudal tax collector for King government to make sure the peasants keep the pieces of eight flowing into the coffers."
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