The Charlotte News
Wednesday, June 24, 1959
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Steelworkers Union and industry negotiators were beginning this date to undertake some quiet horsetrading after seven weeks of negotiations resulting in a stalemate, with neither side being willing to make any concessions. But the strike date of July 1 was now looming. R. Conrad Cooper, executive vice-president of U.S. Steel Corp. and the top bargainer for the industry, said that the steel companies had received no reasonable union offer worth considering. President David McDonald of the Steelworkers Union said that the industry had made no monetary offers. Both carefully had guarded their comments under a common secrecy agreement, but it seemed reasonable to assume that at the current stage, both had begun trading settlement offers. Mr. Cooper, although reluctant to talk about it, said that the steel mills would have to start banking furnaces within a few days in anticipation of the July 1 strike, as present contracts would expire on June 30. There was speculation that, barring any settlement, the union might agree to extend the current agreements, but Mr. McDonald had declined comment on that point. Second-quarter steel profit statements were due in late July and there had been speculation that the union might delay a strike in a gesture of public consideration and wait on the new industry profits statements. First-quarter profits had approached a record and second-quarter statements were expected to be even better.
In Algiers, it was reported that Algerian rebels had thrust a determined column of uniformed soldiers into the outskirts of Bone this date in their first military assault on a major Algerian city. The attack prior to dawn had caused a stand-up battle with thousands of French soldiers, armored units and planes, still raging at noon, eight hours after it had started. Unofficial estimates were that 38 French soldiers had been killed or wounded, with no word on rebel losses. The rebel group had overrun two French Army posts and was infiltrating the east Algerian city before the French had recovered from their surprise. At that point, warplanes had swooped down on the rebels with strafing runs and incendiary bombs. Unofficial sources at Bone said that the rebel troops might number no more than 100, but that they were heavily armed and apparently were under orders to penetrate into Bone, itself.
In Springfield, Mo., it was reported that teargas had ended the rioting in the Federal prison system's large medical center after 16 hours, leaving behind tin cans marked, "Masks, Gas M-9". A guard of 19 years said that the gas "sure did the trick". Sixty percent of the 1,000 prisoners at the facility were insane criminals. On Monday night at shortly before 10 o'clock, the same guard had been sitting in a small office censoring prisoner mail when a prisoner had charged in with a knife in his hand, and before he could realize what was occurring, he had the knife under the guard's throat. He had said: "You make one move and I'll kill you right here. Be quiet." In the ensuing few minutes, the prisoner and 105 other prisoners in the "10 North" section of the hospital had taken the guard and four other guards as hostages. The guard said that all had been pretty quiet and that the inmates had torn open offices and medical chests, and had loaded up on tranquilizers and phenobarbital, all except for the leaders who had not settled down. The first prisoner he had identified, 31-years old, was one of the leaders, serving nine years for violating the Federal firearms act, assault, escape and theft. Another, 19, was serving 4 1/2 years for car theft, and the third, 24, was a military prisoner serving life for murder. The guard said that they had not really gotten scared until the warden had come over and talked to the men, asking them what they wanted and no one knew. The first prisoner he had identified, he said, had no plan at all and "the whole thing was senseless" as they had never stated any real terms. "They just set out to stretch out the thing as long as they could. It made no difference to them if anybody survived." The 106 prisoners in the three buildings of the "10 North" unit included homosexuals and "aggressive personalities". They had torn up furniture, medical cabinets and anything they could get their hands on to form barricades. Many prisoners had gone back to their cells with bloody heads and an undisclosed number had gone to the infirmary with injuries.
In Stalheim, Norway, it was reported that workers and an identification team were sifting through the blackened ruins of a tourist hotel this date, finding three additional bodies, bringing the number of dead after the previous day's disastrous fire to ten. Reports indicated that the total number of dead and missing might be lowered from 25 to 23. One person who had been listed as missing was not on the tour and police had scaled down their list of missing therefore by one. At the scene of the fire, work was progressing slowly, according to police, with one section still smoldering, holding up the search for bodies there. A complete check of the ruins could take several days. Careless smoking by a Norwegian guide was suspected as the cause of the fire. The guide had been questioned through most of the night by police at nearby Voss. A police spokesman had refused to give the guide's name but said that there was reason to believe that he might have caused the fire through carelessness in smoking, that after questioning, he was released but was told to keep the police informed of his whereabouts. A police spokesman said that negligence was only a misdemeanor and so there was no basis for holding him. (Apparently, Norway did not recognize the misdemeanor-manslaughter rule, similar to felony-murder, but involving instead negligent homicide proximately caused by the commission of a misdemeanor.) Investigators did not discount the possibility that some of the missing might still be found alive. Many of the hotel's 147 guests, 130 of whom were Americans, had scattered in the confused hours after the fire had leveled the old wooden building early the previous day. The U.S. Embassy refused to provide any list of American casualties or survivors until it made certain its information was correct. Smoldering embers in the remainder of the building blocked investigators until morning.
In Atlanta, it was reported that a former Chicago youth described by his attorney as a "confused and frightened 17-year old boy" had been held in jail under a $20,000 bond this date on a charge of kidnaping a seven-year old girl. The boy had surrendered to police on Tuesday shortly after the Fulton County grand jury had indicted him for kidnaping, after he had been the object of an extensive four-day police search. His attorney said that the youth had been hiding at the home of his grandmother in suburban East Point, or in woods nearby, and he quoted the boy's grandmother as saying that the youth was so frightened and excited that he was incoherent. Police said that he had allegedly enticed the little girl into his car on Friday afternoon and driven off.
Ann Sawyer of The News, in the third in a series of articles, indicates that a consolidated City-County school system would put all of the wealth of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County behind every child regardless of where the student lived. It was one of the major arguments put forth by advocates of consolidation and one of the reasons given by the Institute of Government in Chapel Hill when it had recommended merger of the systems in 1949. Oliver Rowe, a worker for consolidation, looking back to the 1949 report, recalled that the principal reason advanced at that time for consolidation had been to give the children living in the county "equal educational opportunities enjoyed by the children of the city." The newspapers, some civic clubs and the League of Women Voters had gotten behind the movement, according to Mr. Rowe, but they could not get the idea of consolidation approved by school officials and those in power. He said that the City school people had been unwilling to share a little of their wealth with the poor schoolchildren in the county and that he guessed the County people were too proud to ask for it anyway. Consolidation had not come about at that time and the county later had received much of its wealth in money, students and leadership from the area which had grown up around the city during the previous decade. Operating on a tight budget over the years, the County School System had brought itself to the point at present that it could consolidate with the City as "an equal partner" according to Mr. Rowe. It was obvious, he said, that the original reason for consolidation no longer existed. The perimeter area to be annexed to the City on January 1 had given the County System what it needed to raise its standards, but Mr. Rowe warned: "This thing that has given you strength can be your undoing." County schools recently were spending $205 to educate each child each year or $215 if bus transportation cost was included. The cost in the City was $275 per child per year. The taxable property valuation behind each City pupil at present was $15,000 and for the County student, $9,200. Mr. Rowe said that if the perimeter area were lost from the County System with all its pupils, the remaining valuation to support each County pupil would be reduced to $7,700. Under consolidation, the valuation behind each pupil per year would be about $12,000. Although school consolidation had been in the minds of many people in Charlotte since the late 1940's, the current studies had been initiated in early 1957. In March of that year, a Chamber of Commerce committee had made a report on the proposed city limits extension, and a subcommittee, comprised of Mr. Rowe, James Glenn and Alex Diffie, had reported on how annexat, finding that 43 percent of the tax base for support of the County Schools was in the area under consideration for annexation and that it had 33 percent of the County's pupils. The subcommittee concluded "that the best solution for local school problems would be consolidation of City and County schools." Consolidation, the report said, would allow the fullest and most efficient utilization of all school buildings, administrative staffs and teachers, provide State bus service transportation to all pupils and would be more efficient and less costly than two separate systems. County commissioners had gotten into the act briefly at that point. In March, 1957, the County Board of Education had been asking the commissioners to increase the school supplement from 20 cents to 40 cents per $100 of property valuation. Commission member Sam McNinch had asked whether it would not be better if they went up to 50 cents and consolidated the school systems, and the Commission had gone on record asking the City and County School Boards to study consolidation. A few days afterward, the Chamber of Commerce, then headed by Paul Younts, had called for consolidation discussion, inviting school superintendents Dr. E. H. Garinger of the City and J. W. Wilson of the County, their assistants, the City and County School Board members and PTA representatives. An attorney had headed the Chamber's city limits study committee and he had said that they wanted to see if they could not pick up the ball on the consolidated school systems movement while it was still moving and do something with it. The outgrowth of the Chamber's meeting had been the appointment of a nine-member committee which concluded its study almost a year later by urging school consolidation.
Jerry Reece of The News reports that the City and County School officials this date had laughed off the idea that they might have encouraged out-of-county students to attend school in Mecklenburg County and Charlotte. A letter to the editor appearing this date had accused County School officials of "encouraging" students from other counties to attend school in Charlotte and City School officials of "welcoming" out-of-town students as long as they paid an annual tuition fee. The assistant superintendent of the County System, J. D. Morgan, had gotten a good laugh out of the idea that the long-overcrowded Mecklenburg School System would encourage students from other counties to attend school there. He said that there may have been a time many years earlier when students from other counties had been encouraged to come into Mecklenburg, but with the county's growth during the previous decade, the last thing needed was more students. He said that at one time there had even been competition among Mecklenburg principals to build up their enrollments, but that time had long passed. City School officials had been equally amused by the idea that they would welcome students from out of the county into the Charlotte schools.
Julian Scheer of The News urges tree lovers of Charlotte to unite, after imparting his parody of Joyce Kilmer's ode to a tree: "I think that I shall never see/ An ordinance as lovely as a tree/ An ordinance whose hungry mouth is pressed/ And gives the Council some little rest;/ Poems are made by fools like me/ But only the City Council can make a tree." He reports that there was a Tree Commission in Charlotte still in existence despite reports to the contrary, though they had not met in months, had not done anything and were not getting much help from the City Council. "The whole knotty situation rose (like sap) this week when someone remembered that the appointments to the Tree Commission expired in January. That ain't quite true. The appointments, according to the city tree ordinance, run for two years 'and until their successors are duly appointed.'" The successors had not been appointed and, unless Mayor James Smith was taken into court, he was not touching the Tree Commission with "a ten-foot plank". The Mayor said that the whole thing was a mess, that the ordinance was "unwieldy, unenforceable, terrible. Either we are going to have to revise it or throw it out completely. I'm going to talk to John Shaw [the city attorney] and see what we can do about it." City Council member Claude Albea, a tree lover from way back, agreed, although he introduced the ordinance and had guided it through the Council two years earlier. It had been drawn by a Chamber of Commerce committee on their second attempt and the current version had been less repulsive to the Council than the first one. Mr. Albea said that they needed a workable ordinance and the current one would not do. The Tree Commission people had squabbled among themselves, with the Council and... The remainder of the exciting story is on an inside page, should you wish to chainsaw your way through the wilderness to get to it.
On the editorial page, "The 'Lost Bond' Is a Teapot Tempest" finds that the reports in the newspaper of the previous two days regarding the "lost" $100,000 U.S. Treasury Certificate had been but one small cannonball in Representative Wright Patman's grand attack on the laxity in the Federal Reserve System.
According to the president of the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank, of which Charlotte was a branch, the matter had been thoroughly investigated, clarified, rectified and put to sleep back in 1956 and it finds it hardly worth bothering therefore over it as an example of freewheeling "laxity".
Representative Patman, vice-chairman of the Joint Congressional Economic Committee, had placed himself before in the ranks of those who criticized the banking and credit policies of the Federal Reserve. No one had any way of knowing how accurate his other charges against the administrators of the system were or what his motives were, but nevertheless, his attacks would give aid and comfort to the Fed's enemies and perhaps was intended to do so.
Like the Bank of England, after which the Federal Reserve System had been modeled, it was the capstone of public finance. With its control of credit policies, changes in the re-discount rate and "open market" operations, the sale and purchase of Government bonds, the Fed exerted a major influence on lendable money in the country. The Board had a large say in whether money would be "tight" or "easy".
At the moment, the Fed's chief enemies were to be found among "easy money" advocates who believed that the Federal Reserve's relatively high interest policy would stymie the growth rate of the economy. Several bills had been introduced in Congress during the current session to curb the independence of the Fed or to change its membership to give a larger voice to proponents of "easy money". They were sternly opposed by economic conservatives who believed that it was more vital at present to check inflation than to ensure speedy growth with cheap capital.
The administration of the Fed, it suggests, might not be perfect, that public funds might have been spent entertaining Fed employees and some mistakes may have been carelessly made in its ordinary daily business, but that those minor grievances did not strike to the heart of the controversy. They could prove demagogic in effect if they spurred a mystified public to support those who wished to curb the Fed's independence of political control.
It posits that it was necessary to have a flexible policy of public finance, with freedom to tighten money in times of inflation and relax it in times of recession, that an independent Fed could produce that policy, but if politics were allowed to enter into its operations, the Fed would be dangerously beholding to a party commitment which could seriously mar its role, which was to temper the economy against boom and bust.
Magaville take note, regarding El Presidente's earlier attempts, until finally restrained by the courts, to do just that, to politicize the Fed in a way never done previously by any occupant of the White House until this silly idiot darkened its door, thanks to a bunch of naïve and downright stupid individuals who voted for a reality tv star for the second time, despite proven poor performance the first go-round, except for those deniers of reality and the people with attention deficit disorder who thought it was great and that "Biden brought in 9 percent inflation", the fact having been that in one month, right at the outset of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the resultant Western embargo on Russian oil, shooting up global oil prices, compounded by the pent-up demand suddenly released for consumer goods and the need for businesses to make up for lost time on profits after the two-year slow-down of the economy during the pandemic, inflation was at 9.1 percent for a single month, in June, 2022, averaging 8 percent for 2022, thereafter steadily coming down, hitting 2.4 in late summer, 2024, and finishing at 2.9, now at 3.4 percent as a result of Trump's illegal tariffs and his illegal trumped-up preemptive war on Iran, not posing any imminent threat, with the inflation rate having been in May 4.2 percent. Stupid is as stupid does.
"Geneva Recess Calls for No Autopsy" indicates that as the Big Four foreign ministers had recessed their conference in Geneva until July 13, no autopsy and certainly no celebration was called for. Secretary of State Christian Herter had sounded exasperated as he had told the nation on radio and television the previous night that in his view, the Soviets wanted to absorb West Berlin and keep Germany divided until they could bring the whole country under Communist influence.
It finds that of course they did and that Mr. Herter must have known that much about Soviet desires before he had gone to Geneva. It asserts that if the U.S. wanted to talk about "real" aims, surely the country's aim was to keep Berlin a Western outpost and maintain Germany as split until "free" elections could bring it safely into the Western sphere. It suggests that it could recite "real" aims endlessly and perhaps to the point of absurdity.
Russia, it posits, wanted to plot and finagle until the benevolent dictation of the Kremlin was heeded in every capital in the free world, while America wanted, if possible, to advance the cause of liberal economy and democracy until the best Wall Street brokerages could open branch offices in the shadow of the Kremlin.
The foreign ministers had kept those designs to themselves while conferring in Geneva because it would have been both impolite and impolitic to mention them. Only vague rhetoric of official speeches at a high level enough to disregard had revealed the true missions of East or West. Occasionally, the President interrupted his pleas for a "just and lasting peace" to call Communism a "godless tyranny". Occasionally, Premier Nikita Khrushchev had deviated from stressing how willing he was to go to summit meetings to suggest that Russia would "bury" the West.
It finds that both camps had suffered from split personality, that in practical or political terms, the U.S. wanted amity, an agreement on a fairly modest scale in Berlin, in Germany or in Central Europe. In ideological terms, neither the West nor the Communist East was certain.
It suggests that to recognize the present status quo of a divided Germany might be an interesting starting point for both sides and yet it does not admit the possibility because the ideological side of the West had it that East Germany was a "slave" state and that it was the West's moral duty to set it free, while in real terms, the Russians could see that a prosperous West Berlin distressed the drab and pinched East Germans. To admit that would be an ideological compromise and so the Kremlin's official line was that keeping troops in Berlin abused German autonomy.
It again concludes that it would be premature to perform an autopsy on the conference, that the possibility of negotiation was not yet dead, but that it was safe to say that the long-awaited stroke of the pen which would take the anguish of cold war away was a long way off and would probably remain so until the belief from both sides of the Iron Curtain in "peaceful coexistence" would be genuine. Meaningful political swaps would elude the West so long as East and West harbored a secret desire to devastate and conquer the other side's system.
"Tiresome Quarrels Sidestep Big Issue" indicates that the continuing debate regarding the merits of the County Tax Supervisor's Office was a waste of time, energy and breath, that it would not be settled until City and County tax operations could be consolidated under a single supervisor who could immediately establish appropriate standards of efficiency and effectiveness.
Meanwhile, if the present County tax office was not qualified to organize and supervise the property revaluation, as City Council member Steve Dellinger had suggested, then, it ought be strengthened until it was qualified. It finds that there was too much emphasis in the past on real or imagined shortcomings and conflicts, and far too little emphasis on a comprehensive solution to the whole tax problem in the county, that it was in the latter area that residents of the county would like to see some high-level discussion.
"Coronation" indicates that Dr. Albert Schweitzer, in explaining that beatniks were "superior people afflicted with too much insight into the psychodrama of real life," a female psychiatrist in Illinois had crowned her "king of the beatniks".
We are not certain either why the female pronoun is used in that last phrase, but that's what it says. Actually, like, we cannot really dig it as written. Like, daddio, you are being too obtuse. Did Dr. Schweitzer describe the psychiatrist as "king of the beatniks"? If so, that may have been uncool.
A piece from the New York Times, titled "The Birthday of a Clock", indicates that Britain's most famous clock, as Walter Waggoner had described it in a dispatch to the Times, had "works like a steam locomotive's and the voice of a musical frog."
Big Ben had recently turned 100 years old and had "spoken for a country, an empire, finally an international commonwealth. Like a certain bell in Philadelphia, it has proclaimed liberty throughout the land. Under the Nazi terror between 1939 and 1945 it bonged defiance to the enemies of humanity and, as we have faith, would do so again if a comparable threat arose."
The clock reputedly was named after a corpulent commissioner of works who had not only favored clocks and bells but also was keen for religious liberty, better parks and more efficient government. The clock weighed more than 13.5 tons and was the voice of a nation and a vast community which had moved from "precedent to precedent, from battle to battle, from sacrifice to sacrifice, in a great and admirable cheerfulness in many a tumultuous year." It finds that there was no provincial accent when Big Ben "gives tongue".
It questions how many more centuries it would continue to count time. "Yet there are some things and symbols in our world that not even an H-bomb can overturn. Let us believe that human liberty is one of them, and that when Big Ben sounds 12 o'clock on any noon or any midnight to come it will be there, comfortable and unflinching, when it is time to say 1 o'clock—and all's well."
Speaking of centennials and trumped-up stories full of lies layered upon lies regarding assassination, the Civil War commemorations would start the following mid-October, marking the 100th anniversary of the raid by John Brown on the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, then in Virginia, arguably the first major event of the conflict. John Wilkes Booth would be present at the execution of John Brown on December 2, 1859. So, we suppose, this drama
Drew Pearson indicates that there had been a lot of speculation about the difficulty of obtaining a top businessman to serve as secretary of commerce when actually there were some excellent, dedicated men who could step into the position being vacated by Admiral Lewis Strauss, who had been serving under a recess appointment until his nomination had failed in the Senate recently. He suggests that at the top of the list was Eric Johnston, long-time president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, presently head of the motion picture industry. For years, he had been working faithfully without salary on foreign aid, strengthening NATO, defense mobilization and other unpopular causes, with few men knowing the economic machinery of government better. Another who had served in various semi-official capacities was Charles Taft, brother of the late Senator Robert Taft. Another alert businessman was Charles Percy, head of the Bell and Howell Camera Co., who headed the Republican policy committee—future Senator from Illinois.
Some businessmen would want to wait until 1960 and the next Republican administration, should there be one, to obtain a four-year appointment, but, he indicates, if some of them did not bolster the present Cabinet, there might not be another Republican administration.
He notes that the secretary of commerce did not have to be a big businessman or even a businessman at all. Herbert Hoover, before he had become President, had been an engineer, not considered a businessman when he had become Secretary of Commerce under President Calvin Coolidge, and Henry Wallace had been a farmer before joining the Roosevelt Administration, first as Secretary of Agriculture, then as Vice-President, before becoming Secretary of Commerce in 1945. Harry Hopkins, also Secretary of Commerce under President Roosevelt, had been a social worker.
He indicates that there was a lot of speculation as to why Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, the only female in the Senate, had caused the most dramatic moment of the Strauss confirmation vote when she joined Senator William Langer of North Dakota as one of only two Republicans voting against confirmation. As she had voted, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona had banged his fist on his desk and cursed audibly: "Goddamn! She won't get one cent of money from my committee for re-election." Since Senator Goldwater was chairman of the Republican Committee which dispensed funds for the re-election of Senators, that statement meant a lot, highlighting all the more Senator Smith's courage in voting against the confirmation, knowing what she was facing.
He indicates that in all of the editorialization regarding the failure of the Strauss nomination, one fact had been generally overlooked, that being that his initial cross-examination had begun with freshman Senators, who, with only one defection, had voted unanimously against his confirmation.
Walter Lippmann suggests that Admiral Strauss had suffered through a painful ordeal during his failed confirmation fight which never should have happened, that the "whole wretched business" had arisen from the President's political advisers at the White House failing to take into account the political situation in Congress.
The Admiral's five-year term as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission had expired at the end of June, 1958 and as that date was approaching, the question of reappointing him to another term had been debated in Washington, at the White House, in Congress and in the press. The President decided not to reappoint him because the Admiral had so many enemies in Congress that it was doubtful he would be confirmed and that even if he were, he and the AEC would be in constant trouble.
Following the end of his term, the President assigned him to various posts related to atomic energy, none of which required Senate confirmation. But early the prior fall, following the resignation of Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks, the President made a recess appointment of the Admiral on October 24, about two weeks before the disastrous midterms for the Republicans. There was no indication that the President consulted with the Democratic leadership to determine what they thought of the appointment. The White House had been on notice since the affair regarding the AEC chairmanship that the Admiral was not popular in Congress and with the midterms looming, the President, Mr. Lippmann suggests, should have at least held up the appointment until after the elections, as only then would it have been possible to obtain the "advice" required by the Constitution from the Democratic leadership as to whether the majority would "consent".
He suggests that the failure to take that precaution, required both by common sense and courtesy, had precipitated the "horrid struggle" which had ended the prior week. Had the White House sought the advice before the appointment, the President might well have received assurances of confirmation, or if it found out that he would be attacked and perhaps defeated, he could have appointed someone else. He finds that it would have been better for everyone, including the Admiral, had he not been appointed.
He suggests that the primary explanation for not seeking the advice in advance was that Sherman Adams was no longer, by the prior October, White House chief of staff. Later, the White House reassured itself that it was not right to oppose a President's Cabinet appointment, but he finds the theory feeble, even though the Senate had only eight times previously defeated such an appointment, though having been sharply divided a number of times regarding confirmations.
President Roosevelt's nominee to be Secretary of Commerce, Harry Hopkins, had been opposed by Senator Arthur Vandenburg of Michigan, and FDR's nomination in 1945 to the same position of then former Vice-President Henry Wallace had been bitterly opposed by the late Senator Robert Taft of Ohio because the opposition disagreed with his political philosophy, the reason why Admiral Strauss had been rejected.
The fight against the Admiral, he supposes, would not have been waged so fiercely against him had it not been that there was between the President and a majority in the Senate a deep ideological divide.
At the President's press conference of June 3, he had been drawn into making some remarks unrelated to the Strauss confirmation about the problems of a government divided between the parties, and the President said that he and the late John Foster Dulles had often talked about whether it would be better to have a parliamentary system in which the government would stay in power only when there was a vote of confidence of a majority of the legislature. He said that they had decided to "stick with what we have."
Mr. Lippmann agrees with that assessment, for a parliamentary system would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to operate in a federal union on a continental scale, though he believes it did not mean that the executive branch ought not have as much confidence from the legislative branch as possible, especially necessary when there was divided government.
"Thus, if the Eisenhower administration is to get along well, the President needs a Cabinet which can count on the support of a congressional majority. This would never have been true of Admiral Strauss."
A letter from Matthews, from a member of the school committee of Union County, referenced on the front page this date, indicates that J. D. Morgan, assistant superintendent of the Mecklenburg County Schools, had made statements about "bootleg students" in the school systems of other counties which he finds to be half-truths and insinuations. He wants to know why the County Schools' teachers did not know where their pupils lived, whether they had become so impersonal that they were not concerned with the background of each child, indicating that the teachers made frequent contacts with the parents to bring about a closer coordination of the home and school. For years, he says, Mecklenburg County had been "stealing pupils from neighboring counties in order to build up their school attendance." Until two years earlier, Mecklenburg had run a school bus two miles inside Union County to pick up pupils for its schools. In the so-called "trailer case", he wonders why the County had wished to uproot a young man from all of his friends with whom he had attended school in Matthews and East Mecklenburg High School for 11 years, failing to mention that while his parents' home actually was in Union County, the property on which it rested was in both Mecklenburg and Union, a fact which had been known for 11 years. He wants to know why Mecklenburg had complained vigorously to the State because Union County sent its school bus to pick up the little crippled boy, with the bus stopping only 50 feet from the Mecklenburg County line, whether they were afraid that some of the Mecklenburg youngsters might walk over the line to attend Indian Trail School, a Union County school considered by many to be superior to any school in Mecklenburg. He wants to know why, if they were so crowded in Mecklenburg schools, the Charlotte City Schools welcomed pupils from neighboring counties provided they would pay the required annual tuition fee of $80. He finds that while there were many features of the Mecklenburg schools to be admired, the schools were not a panacea and that many educators believed that in their "crash and cram program to fill youngsters' heads with facts", they were "woefully short in other fields." He finds that they did not provide the personal attention and guidance which were "so essential in the development of character, self-reliance, self-respect, self-determination, ambition, reasoning power, loyalty, good citizenship, and fraternity in the individual." He believes that if the Mecklenburg schools continued in their present direction, their graduates "lucky enough to escape the juvenile delinquency pitfalls", were certain to end up on a psychiatric couch within a few years. He finds it obvious to an outsider that Mecklenburg School officials were extremely concerned over three things, consolidation, integration and finances, and that it was likewise obvious that those same officials who were overly impressed with their own importance, had drummed up a powerful propaganda campaign to "hornswoggle another $8 million bond election out of the citizens of Mecklenburg County. Perhaps an agonizing reappraisal is in order."
A letter writer indicates that if the members of the "Big Four" on the City Council, the four new members who were elected in the recent election, did not like to be called by that name, then the newspapers ought think up something different. He proposes the "Big Bore".
Framed Edition
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