The Charlotte News
Friday, June 26, 1959
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Montréal that the President and Queen Elizabeth this date had dedicated the St. Lawrence Seaway to the common good of their nations and ceremonially had opened the inland shipping channel with a cruise along its first 31 miles. The President, flying in from Washington, had proceeded with the Queen to the St. Lambert Lock, at Montréal's doorstep, the Seaway's eastern gate. There, they mounted a 35-foot high dais for their dedicatory speeches. The President, who had gotten the St. Lawrence Seaway legislation through Congress after other Presidents had failed, called the project a technical and commercial triumph, adding: "It is, above all, a magnificent symbol to the entire world of the achievements possible to democratic nations peacefully working together for the common good." Seated on the platform had been Canadian officials and members of the President's Cabinet who had flown to Canada from Washington, among whom were Lewis Strauss, serving out his last days of his interim appointment as Secretary of Commerce, his permanent confirmation by the Senate having failed. More than 20,000 people had gathered in a 30-acre area around the platform. The Queen had spoken first, tracing the centuries of planning and effort to build a seaway, noting that it was created jointly by the U.S. and Canada and indicating that both nations would benefit from its operations. She concluded: "More than all this, it is a magnificent monument to the enduring friendship of our two nations and to their partnership in the development of North America." The books contained the names of 59,000 people employed in the building of the Seaway. The U.S. Navy band had played "God Save the Queen" and the American National Anthem had been played by a Canadian military band. A youthful choir had sung "O Canada" in French to complete the ceremony.
The President the previous day had vetoed two farm bills which might set the stage for bitter struggles over farm issues the following year both in Congress and in the presidential election campaign. The bills affected wheat and tobacco, the President indicating in effect that an already bad situation would have been made worse instead of better by the bills. Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson had recommended both vetoes and they killed all prospects of legislation for those two crops during the year. Wheat had been in serious trouble because of surpluses and past failure of the present program to control production. Tobacco was losing foreign markets because of its rigid support system keeping prices going up. The tobacco bill would have stopped the increase, but would not have lowered the prices. Democratic leaders in Congress had sharply criticized the President's vetoes, disagreeing with his conclusions, preparing to carry to the voters their contentions that the rejected measures would have reduced wheat production and cut the cost of farm programs to taxpayers. Secretary Benson apparently had no hope of further action on wheat and tobacco at the current session of Congress. He had departed on Thursday night for a ten-day farm trade trip to Switzerland, West Germany and Denmark. Supporters of the bills had virtually abandoned any hope of overriding the vetoes, most of them talking in terms of trying again the following year, but then on a new broad approach to the problems of farm income and supply stabilization. The House Agriculture Committee would open such long-range hearings the following Monday. The vetoed bills would have reduced allotments by 25 percent but would have raised support to 90 percent of parity.
In New York, it was reported that the Steelworkers Union had refused this date to hold further meetings with the steel industry's bargaining team, the union instead inviting direct talks this night with steel company executives. David McDonald, president of the union, said that there was no point in continuing what he called "a farcical filibuster" with the industry's four-man bargaining team. He said that two union settlement offers had been tendered and rejected, but that the four-man industry team had refused to make any contract gain proposal of any character. He denied a charge made by R. Conrad Cooper, head of the bargaining team, that the union had broken off negotiations. Mr. McDonald said that they were actually trying to get the real negotiations started and that there had been no negotiations yet. He had gone on to say that the last steel labor settlement, reached in 1956, had been made as a result of direct conferences with steel industry executives. Present steel contracts would expire on Tuesday and the threat of a strike beginning on Wednesday of 500,000 steelworkers appeared to be increasing.
In Alpena, Mich., it was reported that a radar deathwatch by 29 rescued crewmen of the collision-battered freighter Monrovia had ended this date when the stricken vessel had sunk in fog-covered Lake Huron. The Coast Guard reported that the freighter Norman W. Foyer had lost radar contact with the doomed Liberian ship during the wee hours of the morning, more than 11 hours after it had collided with the Canadian freighter Royalton in heavy fog on Thursday. The freighter had backed into the collision area after losing contact and reported heavy debris in the water, but no sign of the Monrovia. The collision, off Thunder Bay Island in northern Lake Huron, had been the first major shipping accident in the Great Lakes since the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Coast Guard cutters Mackinaw and Acacia had continued to patrol the area after the sinking, placing markers in the water to warn other ships, and the Foyer had proceeded toward Detroit. Fast action by the Foyer, ignoring fog dangers, had resulted in the rescue of the Monrovia's crew some 60 minutes after an order to abandon ship had been flashed. The Royalton had suffered only minor damage in the collision. The cause of the collision had not yet been determined.
In Milan, Italy, it was reported that a four-engine TWA plane with 59 passengers aboard had crashed in flames during a storm this date at Busto Arsizio, 15 miles north of Milan. A TWA spokesman in Rome said that its office in Milan had reported the crash. The plane had been en route from Athens to Chicago via Rome and Milan.
In Little Rock, Ark., it was reported that the Little Rock School Board, in the face of a warning of possible violence issued by Governor Orval Faubus, had officially announced on Thursday night plans to operate Little Rock's high schools on an integrated basis during the fall. The Governor had said at a press conference less than 36 hours before that he felt integrated schools could not be operated in Little Rock without the backing of Federal force. He was not available for comment on Thursday night's action. The five-man Board announced the unanimous decision in a terse statement after a brief executive decision. Apparently the matter had been settled before that meeting. Details of the opening were not announced, but the Board promised "a further and more detailed announcement" at the earliest possible time. Unofficial plans to open the schools under a token program of integration had been announced the previous Thursday after a three-judge Federal District Court decision had struck down a school closing law sponsored by the Governor and had returned control of the schools to the Board. The Governor had shut the four high schools in the city the previous September 12 after the U.S. Supreme Court had rejected a bid for a delay in integration.
Also in Little Rock, the T. J. Raney High School, a practical experiment in resistance to integration, would graduate its first senior class this night, with 196 seniors going through commencement, to be addressed by the Governor, who had paved the way for creation of the all-white private school by shutting Little Rock's public high schools to avoid court-ordered integration. The private high school had enrolled about 850 of the 3,700 Little Rock students displaced by the school closings. Its doors had opened on October 20 and its students had a full 180-day term. Diplomas would be awarded by the man for whom the school was named, Dr. T. J. Raney, president of the Little Rock Private School Corp., which operated the high school. Whether hoods would be worn with the graduation gowns was said to be optional.
In Burnsville, N.C., it was reported that a crude cross had been burned near a black settlement in the town the previous night and that police were investigating the incident this date. Some black boys reportedly had seen the fire and extinguished the flames, carrying the cross away. It had been made of sticks and oil-soaked rags. Twenty black children earlier during the week had requested admission to the Yancey County white schools because there were no black schools in the county. The lone black school had been condemned and closed the previous year and most of the black students traveled by bus to Asheville schools.
In Lenoir, N.C., an automobile running at high speed and containing three young men had crashed into the front of a hardware store on Highway 321-A south of the town before dawn this date and the heavy impact had killed all three immediately. The dead ranged in age between 18 and 23 and all lived in a small village 2 miles south of Lenoir. Officers who reached the scene after the crash in the wee hours of the morning were unable to supply an explanation for the cause of the wreck. The impact had been so great that the motor of the car, a 1955 Chevrolet, was rammed back inside it.
Ann Sawyer of The News, in the fifth of a series of articles on consolidation of the City and County School systems, indicates that at the present time, there were more questions than answers regarding school consolidation. The act making a school merger possible answered some questions, while school officials could answer some others, but answers to too many of the questions were simply not yet known. On such matters as curriculum, officials said that they would have to study both systems and then use the best of each in creating a consolidated program. Perhaps outside educational experts would be called in to do an appraisal and make recommendations. The new consolidated board would consist of the present members of the five-man County School Board and the seven-man City School Board from July 1, 1960, when consolidation would become effective, until the first Monday in December, 1960. The act providing for the reorganization of the County Board of Education stated that Board members as of July 1, 1960, would become members of the consolidated board which would be called the Mecklenburg County Board of Education. The Board would be reduced gradually, losing one member in December, 1960, 1962 and 1963, until the membership reached nine on the first Monday in 1964. Candidates, running a non-partisan election without any political party affiliation, would serve six-year staggered terms with three offering for election every two years. City School Board members were presently elected in a non-partisan race, but County Board members were nominated in primaries and appointed by the General Assembly. Although the consolidated school board race would be held in conjunction with primaries, there would be a separate ballot for it. The consolidated board would fill any board vacancies and would name its chairman and vice-chairman. The act stated that the consolidated board of education would elect a superintendent of schools and "may employ such associate superintendents and assistant superintendents and such other administrative officers, as it may deem necessary and proper."
Julian Scheer of The News reports that John Larkins, a lawyer from Trenton, the Democratic national committeeman and former state Democratic Party chairman, was running hard for governor in 1960. A reporter had sat down with Mr. Larkins this date and had returned with a recording of an interview with the presumptive gubernatorial candidate. He said he was not prepared to make a statement at the present time as to whether he was a candidate. He said that response to the letter he had sent all over the state asking friends what they thought of his chances if he announced, had been excellent. He said that he had some financial commitments but definitely not the reported $250,000, indicating that his brother, C. H. Larkins of Kinston, was doing the fund-raising. When asked what he was if he was not a candidate, he responded, "Democratic national committeeman." When asked whether he was a candidate to be a candidate, he responded, "How's that again, boy?" He said that he would make a definite statement in the fall, sometime between September 22 and December 22. He said that in summary, "Just say I speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil. Thank you, boy." Based on our recollection, he never became a serious candidate, as the Democratic primary boiled down to a race between the ultimately successful Terry Sanford and segregation champion I. Beverly Lake of the Wake Forest Law School faculty, with the foregone conclusion of the general election in the one-party state having been between Mr. Sanford and Robert Gavin, the Republican nominee.
Bill Hughes of The News indicates that a supplied picture of a signature on a letter to the newspaper, condemning a Mecklenburg County school official's charge that "bootleg students" from other counties were causing problems in Mecklenburg schools, had proved baffling, after the letter had appeared in the Wednesday letters to the editor column. It appeared there was no such person under the name given, D. M. Harrison. The mystery man had used the signature provided, but had hidden his true identity, and Union County school officials had checked their lists of committeemen, of whom he had claimed to be one, and they did not find the name. The newspaper had checked tax lists, phone books and city directories in both Mecklenburg and Union, with no luck. It indicates that it welcomed such saucy opinions as he had provided but begs him next time to use his real name.
In Royal Oak, Mich., stripteaser Libby Jones had said that she had just one thing to pep up attendance at the local Lions Club, that she was going to give a talk about her specialty. Club officials had come up with the idea of making her a guest speaker as a "summer stimulant" for sagging attendance. She said that they would like what she had to say about burlesque, which, she said, was "as American as the cowboy." Her measurements were 36-26-36 and she would discuss burlesque's sociological and psychological aspects when she stepped on the speaker's stand at the following Monday's weekly Lions Club luncheon meeting. The burlesque star, who claimed to have a degree in English literature from the University of Washington, was serious about her specialty. She said, "I want to entertain—not just take my clothes off." She said that although she earned up to $1,250 per week as a stripper, she would speak to the Lions Club for free. The club official who had asked her to speak said: "We have fellows here with a variety of tastes. Some like fishing, golf and skiing. We try to select the speakers with appeal to most interests."
On the editorial page, "UNC Stays in the Bidding—A While" finds that appeasement and not victory had been the order of the 1959 General Assembly regarding the school and college needs bearing down on the state. But in one notable area, the appeasement had yielded to massive retaliation, that being in the form of an appropriation of 1.439 million dollars for "merit increases" in faculty salaries for UNC at Chapel Hill, won at the price of dedicated begging by its president, William C. Friday, its vice-president, William D. Carmichael, and others.
It finds it high time and yet it had to be said that State and University officials, who knew full well how menacing were the raids on the state's professors, never pressed their case as ardently as they might have before the taxpayers. They had never made it sufficiently clear, just as in the case of the public school teachers, that the lag in educational salaries was not hundreds but thousands of dollars behind national averages and they had never made it clear that one distinguished professor could make or break an academic department, both by the weight of his eminence and by the circle he attracted.
Governor Luther Hodges had passed through one mood in which he warned several times about the professors vanishing from Chapel Hill, but the mood seemed to evaporate as his interest in other matters quickened.
It finds it hardly surprising when the Advisory Budget Commission had failed to respond to half-hearted warnings, but it had been the blow which compelled University officials to take their brief to the Legislature in earnest and to obtain the vital appropriation for merit increases.
Mr. Carmichael had compiled a report which told of the state's lag in naked figures, that of 15 state universities in the Association of American Universities, of which UNC was the oldest and probably the most distinguished, UNC nevertheless ranked 13th in average professors' salaries, 13th in associate professors' salaries, 11th in instructors' salaries and at bottom in salaries paid to assistant professors. The discrepancies had been so abysmal between Chapel Hill salaries and those at private universities with which UNC had once been favorably compared that Mr. Carmichael thought it needlessly dismal to harp on those figures.
Mr. Carmichael had said that the appropriation might make the University less "a happy hunting ground for universities on the prowl for distinguished teachers and researchers" for awhile. Yet dizzying speculation had made the price of talent zoom. Chapel Hill, with no hope of cornering the market in the way that once had been possible, would need the appropriation and more in the future just to stay in the bidding.
"Stock Your Family Shelter with Books" indicates that for as little as $150, a homeowner could have an adequate hideaway from nuclear weapons in one's basement or backyard, as set forth in "The Family Fallout Shelter", a blunt pamphlet being distributed by Civil Defense.
The Pentagon had estimated that it would take 224 bombs to make rubble of the country and that one big one and one small one could level Washington. When American hydrogen bombs were detonated in the Pacific the previous summer, rabbits 40 miles away had suffered eye burns one-twelfth of an inch in diameter, while 300 miles away, the burns were a quarter that size.
It suggests that maybe it was merciful that the poet could yet chill people more by wondering what it might be like 'to lie in cold obstruction and to rot' or 'dwell in thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice' than Bertrand Russell could chill them by talking of genocide. Dante's Inferno, with its slime pits and hot fires, somehow was more real to people than Hiroshima.
It finds that it perhaps testified to the enduring power of literature to stir people, but more likely it was that people could not think of being destroyed by a weapon the moral significance of which would be beclouded by the universality of its killing. The old allegories gave to death a comforting symbolism which it was not likely to have in a nuclear war. For that reason, people might stock their shelters with the great works of literature and see the impersonal holocaust outside through the lens of a noble story. Civil Defense said that in fact books were relatively stout shields against radiation.
"Voting Machines: Hope for the Future" indicates that for awhile, the Mecklenburg County commissioners had threatened to put their foot down against voting machines, but that at their meeting on Wednesday, the members had notified the urbane ladies of the League of Women Voters that they were willing to put the question of the voting machines to a popular vote.
It finds their momentary hesitation about purchasing the machines immediately to have been understandable. Delay was only human and a bit nostalgic. The baneful echoes of State Senator Lindsay Warren's caveats against the cities and their ways had scarcely died in Raleigh's corridors. Voting machines were the trappings of creeping urbanism, the ornaments of political automation.
But Mecklenburg had cast its lot forever on the side of the city. With the population of Charlotte due to pass 200,000 the following year upon the 1960 census, the cost of ballot-counters and election officials would grow by bounds. Voting machines, if approved by the voters, could be paid for in 30 years by savings in election costs and their life expectancy was 60 years. Purchasing them would bring a common sense economy to the democratic process.
"On Nipping Smelt Rats in the Bud" indicates that the prim and proper New York Times had been sniggering up its sleeve recently at Representative Leslie Arends of Illinois because he had mixed his metaphors during a debate over who was to blame for the national debt. He had said, "Let's not point the finger without putting the shoe on the other foot."
It says, good for him, and as for the Times, it predicts that its scorn would "go in one ear and out the other like water over a duck's back." The whole trouble with the plain talk it heard from politicians at present was that it was too plain. No one ever tore off a mask to display his cloven hoof or lay spreadeagled on the horns of a rudderless dilemma anymore. Even if such a phrase was dropped, the speaker hastily added, "If I may be allowed to mix a metaphor."
It finds that, actually, the art of mixing metaphors had always been practiced best in the British Isles, as when the immortal Irishman Sir Boyle Roche had smelt his visionary rat floating in the air of the House of Commons and wanted it nipped in the bud. Then there had been the prohibitionist M. P. who had declared that "the floodgates of irreligion and intemperance are stalking arm-in-arm through the land." One of the finest examples had been from the member who had blared, "The new minister will have to have courage and a double-edged scythe to cut down and winnow away the army of barnacles that have got into the establishment."
It finds that nothing so grand ever found its way into the Congressional Record and more was the pity. When a man such as Mr. Arends threw a monkey wrench into the works and said something salty, he promptly got his fingers burned with a journalistic haymaker. It says that if it were Mr. Arends, it would leave no stone unturned until the unfair criticism was nipped in the bud.
A piece from the New York Herald Tribune, titled "The Sounds of Paris", indicates that it seemed only yesterday that Paris had been reported to have licked the noise problem by silencing its automobile horns, and now it had learned that the prefect of police there had appealed for a week of quiet, with particular emphasis on motorcycles, motorbikes and motor scooters.
It indicates that a child passed through measles and then mumps befell him, a man survived the state income tax and then the Federal tax confronted him, a city overcame auto horns and then scooters got it down. It wonders whether the answer would ever be found. "Does all life lead to the earplug? Is civilization pricing itself out of the market? These are profound questions and we leave them to be pondered by our friends in Paris, preferably on a café terrace with the breezes in the chestnut trees sighing softly overhead."
Drew Pearson indicates that a lot of people were taking credit for the St. Lawrence Seaway, as it officially linked the Atlantic Ocean with the Great Lakes, but that the man who probably deserved the most credit would not be present at the opening ceremonies, that being former President Herbert Hoover, in semi-seclusion at the Waldorf Tower in New York. It had been Mr. Hoover who had served with such imagination and vigor as Secretary of Commerce during the Administration of Calvin Coolidge that he had become President in 1929. Those had been the days when the job of Secretary of Commerce had not been considered a routine obligation to kowtow to big business. Mr. Hoover had built up the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, pushing the idea of connecting the Atlantic Seaboard with the Great Lakes cities and even had proposed repairing the eroding lip of Niagara Falls. Later, when he tried to put across the St. Lawrence Seaway as President, he had failed, as had President Roosevelt and President Truman after him. They all had failed because of opposition from the railroads and shipping interests along the Atlantic Seaboard.
The next person deserving credit for the Seaway was former Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey, who had once bitterly opposed the Seaway as "a socialistic ditch", but who had become its champion under President Eisenhower. The reason for his switch was that his M. A. Hanna Co. had secured valuable ore concessions in Labrador and needed to open a water route through the Great Lakes. Having skimmed the cream of Minnesota's iron ore, Mr. Humphrey's National Steel Co. and other steel interests had to obtain new ore supplies from Labrador or starve. Thus, almost overnight big steel had gone to bat for the Seaway. George Bender, who as the Republican Senator from Ohio, had played ball with Mr. Humphrey, complained, as the latter switched his position from opposing to approving the Seaway, saying: "I wish George Humphrey would give us a little more advance notice."
Time Magazine had started hostile investigations of the 11 Senators who had voted against Clare Boothe Luce as ambassador to Brazil, Mrs. Luce being the wife of Life-Time-Fortune publisher Henry Luce.
General Curtis LeMay, the Air Force's gruff vice-chief, had told reservists to their face recently that they would be useless in war because they would never be ready in time. "Reserve officers are good only for answering telephones. The whole shooting match would be over in 30 days."
The whittled-down housing bill had been the work of House Speaker Sam Rayburn and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, who had pulled the economy strings inside the Senate-House conference.
While the Eisenhower Administration was trying to raise interest rates on G.I. home loans, veterans could not get settlements on their home purchases. The banks were delaying the contracts until the interest rate would rise.
Metropolitan Opera star Richard Tucker and Francis Cardinal Spellman, meeting at New York's LaGuardia Airport recently, had swapped favors. The Cardinal agreed to arrange an audience with the Pope for the Jewish singer during the summer in return for the first pressing of his latest recording.
Marquis Childs indicates that from time immemorial public officeholders had set themselves up as guardians of public morality, that in ancient Greece, Socrates, perhaps the greatest of all philosophers, had been charged with corrupting the morals of the youth of Athens and put to death for it.
In barring from the mails the unexpurgated edition of the novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield had put himself in the role of public arbiter over private morality. Mr. Childs believes that quite aside from the merits or demerits of the case, the reasons were not hard to find.
Mr. Summerfield, who, with Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, was the only holdover from the original 1953 Eisenhower team, was a man of great moral earnest. As Postmaster General, he had become familiar with the flood of pornography sent through commercial channels into every part of the country. It had been a shocking discovery, as it must have been to every innocent citizen, to learn that big-business methods and techniques had been applied for profit to the dissemination of smut. He indicates that not alone to those who answered phony-sounding advertisements, unsolicited in the mails, such filth came to young people whose names were on mailing lists available for a price.
Mr. Summerfield set the volume of smut to perhaps a half-billion dollars worth per year. He told of one raid in New York City which had netted 17 tons of pornography being mailed out by assembly-line techniques. In a locked room adjoining his office, the Postmaster General had assembled a chamber of pornographic horrors. It ran the gamut from nudist magazines, published allegedly in the interests of those seeking health through sun-bathing, to the vilest representations in photographs and drawings. All of the material, including several pornographic motion pictures, had been taken from the mails in the drive to stop the traffic which had apparently brought high profits to a few exploiters. Mr. Summerfield had shown a number of members of Congress through his chamber of horrors. Female members, he explained, were escorted by a female postal attendant.
The Post Office Department had prosecuted the mass-pornographic peddlers. Formerly, the prosecution could take place only at the point at which the material was mailed, the two primary centers being New York and Los Angeles. Now, the accused could be tried at the point at which the material was received and where the damage was being done.
Those who criticized Mr. Summerfield in the case of Lady Chatterley's Lover, were fearful that in his zeal, he would blur the line between pornography, art and literature and open the way to broad suppression of work which should not be branded by the censor. But he had no doubts of the rightness of his actions. In his desk, he maintained a marked copy of the novel by D. H. Lawrence, and pointed to the explicit passages with four-letter words not used in polite society. Mr. Childs opines that the novel made a poor case for those who championed freedom of expression. When it had first been published in its unexpurgated form, it had been banned in England and other countries. Critics had found it turgid and self-conscious, and the book would probably have been forgotten had it not been for the love scenes between Lady Chatterley and her husband's game-keeper.
Nevertheless, it was the work of a widely recognized genius who had exercised considerable influence on his time. Without the publicity resulting from the action barring the book from the mails, the new edition might have been all but ignored. The Postmaster General said that the publisher had invited the action, which raised a question as to why he responded to the invitation and had given the book such wide publicity.
The drive to stop commercialized smut was all-important. But if it spilled over into the area of literature, and unfortunately legitimate publishers often used dubious lures, it could do great harm.
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain,
tells of Paul Gallico having come to call on him in Spain recently
and that they had not talked about the latter's tremendous fresh
success, "Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris", already a book and
soon to become a musical comedy and eventually a movie. Mr. Gallico
had been a sports writer, as had been Mr. Ruark. So they had talked
about the return of the knuckleball, as practiced by Hoyt Wilhelm
He indicates that he knew something about knuckleballers because he had a Collier's Magazine issue of June 22, 1940 handy, containing the first major magazine piece he had ever sold, bought by Quentin Reynolds, then the sports editor of Collier's, purchased from him blind, without an agent. Its title was "Catcher Killer" and the subheading read: "When Dutch Leonard lets go his knuckleball even he doesn't know whether it's going to break right or left, up or down. So what chance has the batter against such a freak? Or even the poor, bruised guy behind the plate?" He indicates that the poor, bruised guy behind the plate was then a very good catcher for an awful ball club, the Washington Senators, was now a successful business manager for the Detroit Tigers, Rick Ferrell. He still had psychic as well as physical scars from catching for an old guy who had said he was 29 years old in 1939 and had probably been 35.
Mr. Leonard had become a magazine piece in 1939, the day he had beaten young Bob Feller, 1-0, in 13 innings, when Mr. Feller was still so young and fast that he wore his baseball cap with his street clothes and practiced his throwing motion in the mirror of his hotel room. That year, Mr. Leonard, working for a nothing ball club, chronically tied for last place with the Philadelphia Athletics, had won 20 games. The magic 20 was something, even if one were pitching for the world champions. Mr. Leonard made it with a club which could not field, could not hit, and rarely spoke English, because its manager, Clark Griffith, was exploiting the Cuban sugar cane mines. Mr. Leonard had thrown nothing but knuckleballs, could not have killed a butterfly with his fastball, and his curve had been a symbol of togetherness with a bat.
Mr. Ferrell said for Collier's: "How do you expect anybody to hit it when I can't even catch it? It comes over the plate all right, and it looks soft. But about the time I try to put a mitt on it the damn thing jumps and socks me in the leg. The guy's about to beat me to death with this dipsy-doodler."
He suggests that with a decent ball club, Mr. Leonard might have won 30 or 35 games that year, because when one had a catcher with guts enough to catch a knuckleball, you had a pitcher on whom no one could hit.
Red Smith quoted Yogi Berra on Hoyt Wilhelm, "If everybody threw a knuckler, there wouldn't be a .200 batter in the league."
He indicates that Mr. Leonard and Mr. Wilhelm had remarkably similar backgrounds, as both had been trading flotsam and had come to a starting position after dreary years of relief work. If the catcher was valuable, usually knuckleball pitchers did not start. When Mr. Wilhelm was working for the New York Giants, he had bet everyone five dollars that no one, including Willie Mays, could hold three out of five pitches, and he had won.
There had been only three real expert knuckleball pitchers whom Mr. Ruark could remember, George Caster with the Athletics, Mr. Wilhelm, and Mr. Leonard. Mr. Leonard had been a real ballplayer. Quentin Reynolds had paid Mr. Ruark $400 for the Collier's piece and Mr. Leonard had given him 50 percent, the last deal made with a knuckleballer, as it was "too tough on the hands."
A letter writer indicates that the 1959 session of the Legislature, which had ended June 20, had been the worst he could remember, that if there were any legislation at all passed which was in the best interests of the state and the people, he failed to notice it. He believes that the bill to withhold wages for State income tax purposes had been a steal, as both the Federal Government and now the State were in the "stickup business". He believes that the bill forcing all parents to have their small children vaccinated, taking control of parents over their own children and giving it to the State, had been a "fine piece of Communist legislation." He indicates that the whole government, from Washington down to the smallest state, was headed for bankruptcy. The 75-cent minimum wage bill, he suggests, was nothing to crow about, but that those who had put it through thought that they had done the working man a great favor. "A well-bred bird dog could not live on $30 a week." American statesmanship seemed to have died in America, and cheap politicians did not know how to do anything except waste, spend and tax the people, raising salaries of those in public office who were already receiving too much, meaning more taxes.
Yeah, but what about the Chinese Prince pilferer
Framed Edition
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