The Charlotte News
Friday, July 10, 1959
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Winnfield, La., that Governor Earl Long had said this date that he would file a lawsuit on Monday for damages in excess of 2 million dollars against Time, Inc., for what he claimed were "slanderous articles and pictures in Time and Life magazines. He said that he expected his attorney to file the suits in a district court in Baton Rouge. There had been no comment on what material in the magazines the Governor was referring to, but two of his legislative leaders, State Senator B. B. Rayburn and State Representative Jesse McLain, had been upset the previous night when they read the current issue of Life, particularly critical of a picture which showed the Governor on the edge of a bed in a Covington, La., motel the previous week in bed clothes and without his false teeth. In a further comment on his planned vacation in the West, the Governor, 63, said that he would leave his Winnfield farm for Shreveport, La., on Saturday and then catch a plane for Fort Worth, Tex.
In Washington, it was reported that the jury in the Richard Mack-Thurman Whiteside conspiracy case had been discharged this date after deliberating for more than 30 hours without reaching a verdict, the Federal District Court judge having discharged the jury from further deliberations after receiving a note from the foreman in which he said that the jury was deadlocked 11 to 1, as usual, per court instructions, not mentioning which way the jury was swayed. Mr. Mack, former member of the FCC, and Mr. Whiteside, a Miami attorney, had been accused of conspiring to rig the award of a Miami television channel to Public Service Television, Inc.
In Norwood, N.C., it was reported that heavy rains the previous day had caused reddish waters to rise as much as ten feet over the banks in some areas of the Rocky River. Lowland areas were flooded, but no great damage had been done by the waters. Local police said that the townspeople were not worried about the flood, although the waters were still supposed to be rising. The waters were reported by the town clerk to be the highest since September, 1946, but long-time residents could remember when the river was over the bridge 2 miles below town, and there was no danger of that occurring at present. In Wadesboro, the Rocky River was 12 feet above normal in the northwest corner of Anson County late during the morning. At least one bridge on N.C. Highway 742 was under water, that highway connecting Wadesboro with Oakboro.
John Kilgo and Emery Wister of The News report that rain from tropical storm Cindy had been blamed this date for a fire and explosion in southern Charlotte the previous day which had injured 13 persons. The blast had occurred as firemen had sought to subdue a fire at the Charlotte Chemical Laboratories. All of the injured except one fireman had been either in satisfactory condition or released from the hospital this date. The rescue work of one fireman had been credited with saving the life of another fireman, who was in fair condition. The fire had injured more persons that in any time since August, 1929, when 21 persons had been injured in a fire in the Belk's Department Store basement. The city's worst blaze had occurred in 1914 when dynamite had exploded in a barn, killing two and injuring seven. Officials estimated that damages from the explosion would run between $15,000 and $20,000, and in addition it was believed that as many as 200 automobiles parked in the area of the blast would require repainting. The cause of the explosion, according to firemen, had been the rain which had touched off sodium hydroxide stored in vats. The president of the Charlotte Chemical Laboratories, owners of the abandoned building where the explosion had occurred, said that the heavy rain had cut through a protective coat of kerosene on top of the vats. The plant, abandoned for new quarters about three years earlier, had been in the process of being torn down and only the walls remained, leaving the vats exposed to the rain.
Mr. Kilgo separately reports that one young, nervous fireman had said of the fire: "You've seen pictures of an atom bomb going off… That's what this was like, only worse. It was a great ball of fire and it mushroomed and then there were great clouds of white smoke. I was scared. Everybody was. I was working the pump on the truck and the door was open and I dove in. We radioed back to headquarters, 'Send more trucks and ambulances.'" Another fireman told of the explosion which had injured his friends: "The thing exploded and the smoke was so thick you could have cut it with a knife. I went into the building because I thought I might be able to help someone. I hollered, 'Who's here? Who's here?' I couldn't see but kept on hollering. At first, no one answered. Then I heard someone in a weak voice, 'I'm here. I'm here.' I still couldn't see but I told the boy to keep on hollering that I would find him. I felt my way around and came to this hole in the floor. George Greene [the fireman who was most seriously injured] was in there. He couldn't see and he was weak. I got down under there with him and started crawling out with him. It was slow. Real slow. The smoke was still thick and you could hear people hollering for help. It was a weird feeling. I finally managed to make it to the door with George and then someone helped me get him out. When I got outside, Luther Caudle, another fireman, was hysterical. His young brother, Al, was somewhere and we did not know where. He had been fighting the fire inside the building. Luther was hurt and he hollered: 'Al, Al. Somebody get in there and look for him. Where's Al?' I went back into the building and looked for Al for what must have been five or ten minutes."
Julian Scheer of The News also relates of the firemen at the firehouse, on an ordinary, sleepy day, prior to the alarm.
Eddy Gilmore of the Associated Press
reports from London that Irish playwright Brendan Behan
On the editorial page, "Rescue of Urban Renewal Program Is an Absolute Must for Charlotte" finds it essential to the city and hundreds of other U.S. cities that urban renewal funding be rescued from the 1959 Housing Act, which had been vetoed by the President.
New public housing could wait its turn. Congress had failed to demonstrate a clear need for the 45,000 units authorized in the omnibus bill sent to the White House on June 23, plus another 35,000 optional units per year after June 30, 1960. But urban renewal was another matter, as a critical need in that area existed. It indicates that it was documented in gutted urban landscapes and in human tragedy. Unless funding was forthcoming soon, the problem of urban blight would assume alarming proportions and the longer the country waited to correct it, the more it would cost to do so. Re-housing of people displaced in slum clearance operations was also essential. The displaced must be assured decent dwellings elsewhere, but it was neither necessary nor particularly desirable that a new unit of public housing be built for every displaced family, as Congress appeared to believe.
It quotes from the Housing and Home Finance Agency's own literature, that "a good many of these people can and should be re-housed in private housing." The remainder ought be given priority in existing public housing facilities. Confident that the phase of the problem could be licked, cities such as Charlotte needed additional urban renewal funding whether or not a single new public housing unit was built in fiscal 1960. For that reason, it finds it regrettable that the two phases of the problem were placed in a single piece of unsatisfactory legislation. An adequate urban renewal bill might have been signed by the President had it not been linked to what Housing director Norman Mason had called a "whopping program of public housing." Had that happened, the question of new public housing could have been decided solely on its merits later and not as part of a mixed political package labeled "all or nothing."
The vetoed bill had authorized urban renewal grants under contract authority to the extent of 500 million dollars for fiscal 1960 and 400 million for fiscal 1961. That was not a lavish program and would merely have kept urban renewal "on a hand-to-mouth basis", as Senator Joseph Clark of Pennsylvania had noted, when a long-term commitment was essential. The Administration itself had requested 1.45 billion dollars over a six-year period.
The urban renewal program had been launched in 1949 and its funds were not simply handouts, representing a form of teamwork between local communities and the Federal Government. Cities could borrow money from the Federal Government for planning a slum clearance project, acquiring the blighted land, removing the buildings and running in such facilities as water and sewer lines to serve the new homes and businesses slated to occupy the cleared site. Once the site was ready for new structures, the city could sell the land to a private developer. The money which the developer paid the city for the site was subtracted from the total amount which the city spent on the slum clearance project. The resulting amount was the city's net cost or loss, and the Federal Government paid the city for two-thirds of that loss.
The Urban Renewal Administration was virtually out of funding at present, but the demand for urban renewal money continued to pile up. North Carolina alone had five urban renewal projects underway. Federal funding promised or received totaled 5.14 million dollars. Charlotte's urban renewal program would be seriously stalled unless a new renewal bill was signed into law. Without an additional appropriation of any description, Charlotte would be able to complete only about 20 percent of the 228-acre project which was planned.
But Charlotte's needs represented only a drop in the bucket when compared to those of much larger cities in California, Connecticut, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania. The necessity had been outlined in detail by the American Municipal Association and the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and it urges that it had to be met and met quickly.
"President's Quiet Plea Is Not Enough" indicates that the President continued to rely on the romantic view that the Steelworkers Union and steel management would reach a settlement favorable to the "public interest", putting off a strike scheduled for the following week. In the quarrel, the industry had sought a wage freeze and an end to the "escalator" scheme under which steel wages followed the trend of the cost of living index. The Steelworkers were asking for more money.
The industry, about which practically every important durable-goods industry in the country revolved, had already produced for its main customers a satisfactory backlog of materials, and the Steelworkers had already provided notice that they would strike on schedule. The attitude of both sides appeared to be one of relative indifference to public approval or disapproval. Thus, there appeared no evidence that there was any incentive to avoid the strike.
It finds that since the days of the Boston Tea Party, politicians of good reputation of all major parties had preached that the central belief of the American economic system was that conflicting claims ought be left to go their own way. If public alarm was more pronounced than usual in the current year, the alarm could probably be traced to the fact that union leaders had come to take that wisdom as seriously as the leaders of big business. Thus, neither Jimmy Hoffa of the Teamsters Union nor David McDonald of the Steelworkers Union felt bound to exercise any restraint in the name of the public interest.
It indicates that unrestrained freedom to pursue private interest had given the unions their pound of flesh in continual wage increases and it had been no imminent enemy to the steel industry. An economist for the antitrust subcommittee, chaired by Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, had calculated that net profits for U.S. Steel had risen from $7.47 per ton in 1953 to $19.31 during the first quarter of 1958.
Thus, it appeared that "full speed ahead" was a profitable motto and was in accord with the most venerable American economic wisdom, with no restraint on either the Steelworkers or management to restrain themselves on behalf of the consuming public. The President's quiet plea, if conceived in the most venerable Yankee mercantile spirit, was therefore, it finds, a bit romantic. Given his war against inflation, it finds it also a bit absurd. "Mr. Eisenhower should intervene personally in the dispute and use every means at his command to head off the strike."
"Charlotte Takes up Pedestrian-Chasing" indicates that somewhere in the heavy volumes of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud must have remarked on the beast within which turned polite pedestrians into rude curs when they climbed behind the wheel of a car. It finds it a curious quirk of humankind.
From Paris to Los Angeles, it had only taken a cranked engine to unleash the hunting instinct, with the result that pedestrian-chasing had become a blood sport second only to chasing foxes to hounds in Virginia.
According to the Charlotte police, the worst offenders in the city were those who set out to make right turns on green lights, but sped on, illegally, to drive the pedestrians out of the way. It suggests that perhaps it was time for someone in Charlotte to sponsor a bad driving contest, similar to the contest which humorist Art Buchwald of the New York Herald Tribune had sponsored the previous year in Paris. His grand prize had gone to a certain monsieur, the driver of a Mercedes-Benz, who had finished off 20 patrons of a sidewalk café "without damaging any of the tables."
Simeon Stylites, writing in the
Christian Century, in a piece titled "Time to
'Grammarize'", indicates that among the bright spots of the
galaxy of songs in "My Fair Lady" was one outburst entitled
"Why Don't the English Teach Their Children How To Speak?"
Led by an army of pedants and bright advertising men, the general public was presently making a violent and brutal assault on the English language, the worst since Shakespeare and the translators of the King James Bible had stabilized it.
Now was the time for all good men to come to the aid of the English language, and in a hurry. He suggests taking for instance the abomination of desolation, the vogue of making an alleged verb out of any noun found lying around unemployed. Thus, the executive secretary of almost anything said, "Let's finalize the matter." His tribe never ended anything, but "finalized" it. Then there were such crimes as "accessorize", interiorize" and "initialize".
"The glorious goal is to make five syllables grow where only one grew before. In this dialect we are told that 'Mr. Jones authored a book.' To say that he wrote it would be too crude. Let's finalize the whole mess!"
Madison Avenue advertising men were committing rough mayhem on a great heritage, often making nouns serve as verbs, as in the sickening concoction, "Pleasure up your smoking." People were commanded to "de-avoirdupois" their food. "Someone ought to tell the clients of these wizards that, with correct grammar, English sounds good AS a fine language should."
Drew Pearson indicates that the President probably did not mean to play his cards that way, but he had just handed the Democratic Congress an issue which would either tear the Democrats of Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson and the liberal Democrats into two fiercely divided camps or unite them in harmony, that issue being the veto of the housing bill. To get inside the story of why it was going to make or break the Democrats, one had to know the developments which had transpired in the privacy of Senate cloakrooms, which he provides.
One development was that Senator Joseph Clark of Pennsylvania, one of only three Democrats to be elected Mayor of Philadelphia since the Civil War and therefore in a position to speak for Northern Democrats, had been showing other Democratic Senators a chart of how Senator Johnson had failed to support the party. In repeated cases, Senator Clark's chart showed that the leader had failed to vote with Democrats, the Senator maintaining that Senator Johnson did not deserve to be the Democratic leader.
The second development was that Senator Johnson, himself, was weeping on the shoulders of Republican friends regarding the ingratitude of the President, calling the latter an "all-or-nothing man", a man who did not appreciate compromise. Senator Johnson told Republican Senators that he had stuck out his own neck with Democrats to try to give the President compromise legislation approaching what he wanted, whereupon the President had vetoed it. In the face of the President's veto, Democratic rebels were saying: "We told you so. Why compromise in the first place? If the President is going to veto Johnson's attempts to give him what he wants, why not pass the Democratic program in the first place?"
The third development had occurred in the privacy of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, when Deputy Premier Frol Kozlov had been lunching with its members, talking about housing and admitting that at present the U.S. was ahead of the Soviet Union. Then he had proudly unfolded a program for Soviet housing which was considerably more ambitious than the one which the President had just vetoed.
The fourth cloakroom development was that rebellious Democrats had pointed out that they had the President over the housing barrel, that all they had to do was to re-pass the same housing bill he had just vetoed and keep on re-passing it, that eventually he would have to sign it, provided they were tough enough. The reason he would have to sign it was because the housing bill contained mortgage money authority for FHA upon which the entire construction industry depended. The FHA had already exhausted its mortgage money and was writing IOU's to keep the building boom going. Thus, if Congress did not choose to pass a housing bill, the President's own friends would suffer the most.
Joseph Alsop indicates that Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson meant to keep the legislators at work at least until September 14, a late adjournment date without precedent in the annals of Congress. His reasons for the extraordinary plan were highly practical, as his reasons customarily were. The 1960 Democratic national convention was scheduled to begin on July 11 in Los Angeles, meaning that the following year's session would have to end no later than July 8 to permit the Senate's numerous Democratic presidential hopefuls not to be inconvenienced, and thus the ensuing session would not be able to do more than pass the annual appropriations bills. Meanwhile, Senator Johnson and his partner in the House, Speaker Sam Rayburn, were grimly determined to extract a whole series of violently controversial measures from the 86th Congress. Come hell or high water, they meant to pass a labor reform bill, a civil rights bill, a school construction bill and a minimum wage bill.
All of those measures, if passed as planned, would no doubt be extremely moderate bills by the standard of the Democratic left wing. But passing even the most moderate civil rights and school construction bills, for instance, would be a Herculean task. If it was to be done, it would have to be done during the present session, which was why Senator Johnson and Speaker Rayburn had agreed to continue the session for a duration without any previous peacetime parallel.
Mr. Alsop indicates that those facts had considerable bearing on the row which was presently ongoing inside the Democratic Party. During the weekend, Paul Butler, DNC chairman, had attacked the party leadership in Congress for failing to "come along with the party program" and for following "a conservative and moderate program" of their own. Northern Democrats, such as Senators Joseph Clark of Pennsylvania and William Proxmire of Wisconsin, had repeatedly said the same kind of thing. Yet, Senator Proxmire believed that it would be wonderful if the session could accomplish as much as passing, even in compromise form, the above-listed bills. Thus, the first point to remember was the rather simple one that the current session's record was far from complete. If Senator Johnson had anything to do with the outcome, it would not be a "won't do" record when finally written.
Some Northern Democrats would still be dissatisfied with the record, but mainly because they shared the opinion of the late Senator Robert Taft, who had once remarked that "the business of an opposition is to oppose." As with Senator Taft when President Truman had been in office, the Democrats wanted now to attack the President at every turn, whether or not there was any prospect of a positive result. But Speaker Rayburn, Senator Johnson and their comrades in the Democratic leadership were convinced that such fruitless contention for contention's sake was bad politics.
In the matter of the budget, for instance, Senator Johnson was by no means wedded to the President's view that the American economy would faint and fail if Government investment was substantially increased. But he rightly held that the Congress could not make a comprehensive new attack on the gigantic problem of Government investment. Congress could pass swollen appropriations bills, but only the President could take the initiative to revise the tax structure and only the President could do the other complex and difficult things which had to be done before Government investment could be increased with safety.
Thus, Senator Johnson and Speaker Rayburn had decided that spending was to be held down at the current session. Some Northern Democrats were displeased with that decision, but there was no sign that the country was displeased. To the contrary, the most recent Gallup poll had shown that more Americans than ever before, well over 60 percent, were presently planning to vote for Democratic Senators and Representatives in the next election.
Marquis Childs indicates that Sam Rayburn, 77, was serving his eighth full term as Speaker, and had begun to hear the thunder of discontent from the left. It was generated by those who were dissatisfied with the record of the current Congress. With DNC chairman Paul Butler, they felt that the big majorities of the prior November in the midterms should have been translated into progressive legislation, and saw that even when Speaker Rayburn and Senate leader Johnson tried to cut the cloth to the Eisenhower budget-balancing pattern, as in the housing bill, the President had nevertheless used his veto power. Increasingly embittered, many Democrats believed that their leaders had fallen into a trap deliberately set by the Republicans on the spending issue.
But Mr. Rayburn's loyal lieutenants, including some of the ablest men in the House, had insisted that the critics were ignoring two major factors. First, there was the enormous complexity of legislation to dissolve contemporary problems, and, second, the more serious problem, the political fragmentation within the two parties as they were mirrored in the House.
Shortly, the Rayburn leadership would seek to pass a labor reform bill, a tough test of whether the fragments could be put together to obtain a majority for a measure which would go a reasonable distance toward reform. It was like trying to pull a single straw from a tangled heap of jackstraws without bringing the whole structure down. With his profound knowledge of the makeup of the House, and with the aid of such skilled lieutenants as Representative Richard Bolling of Missouri, Mr. Rayburn might pull it off. What was evident was that no one in his place could come close to it. Having slowed down at 77, he was still in his best hours a master of the game of jackstraws which had to be played if any legislation was to come out of the 436 members of the House. As a Southerner and a Texan, he had lived with the reality of a divided party all of his life. Only rarely, as in the days of his majority leadership during the New Deal era, had it functioned strongly and effectively as a national party.
More recently, Mr. Rayburn had lived with the reality of a Minority Leader, Charles Halleck of Indiana, who was ruthless and ambitious. Skillfully, Mr. Halleck had played up to the Southern Democrats, using them, as in the bill to seek to constrain the Supreme Court's jurisdiction, for his own ends. Nothing would please him more than to have the two Democratic factions fall out with one another over civil rights. That was the most obvious reason why it had been decided in the Rayburn command that no civil rights bill could clear the House.
Whether it was because Mr. Rayburn had ruled so long and with such a stern hand or whether it was a reflection of the troubled times, there was one thing which Mr. Rayburn's friends and foes tended to agree on, that the Speaker, in the old tradition, was sawing wood and saving little.
Doris Fleeson indicates that Vice-President Nixon's journey to Russia beginning July 28 was widely viewed in Washington as the opening of his campaign to be nominated and elected president. About 60 reporters would accompany him and others presently stationed in Europe would join the party in Moscow. The Vice-President's solicitude for them was such that he was considering allowing them to have the honor of making the initial flight in the newer and fast Boeing jet which had been set aside for him. It would mean that the Vice-President, the President's brother, Milton, and the other assorted notables of the official party would arrive after the press.
She indicates that it was the pattern of presidential air travel, whereby reporters and photographers were always dispatched ahead of the White House party so that the news channels and news technicians could be ready and waiting to record the event for posterity and the voting public. For obvious reasons, it was agreeable to those who had to put the occasion in words and on film.
Mr. Nixon was also trying to induce the Soviet authorities to lift all censorship on communications from his traveling entourage. Reporters had been told that those assurances, however, had not been forthcoming. The correspondents would welcome such expediting of their technical chores, especially as they would be operating in strange territory with nearly all of them having a language difficulty. The staff of Mr. Nixon had been justly praised for its foresight and attention to such details when their boss traveled. It helped to relieve the inevitable tensions among the competitive newsmen and to foster as much togetherness as they were capable of having when at work, which, she comments, was not very much.
The press party had not yet been assured that it had clearance from the Russians. A major problem appeared to be that the Russians were insisting that for the journey across Siberia, Russian planes had to be used. The Russians appeared not ready to promise that a fleet of them would be available so that all reporters who desired to go along, which would include most of them, could do so.
It was not yet apparent whether the mixed reception accorded in Washington for First Deputy Premier Kozlov meant problems for the Vice-President. The travels of Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kozlov were a reciprocal affair, each being assigned to open his country's Trade Fair in the homeland of his country's greatest rival. That the Russians would strive for complete security for the Nixon party was not doubted, just as the U.S. Government had so sought for Mr. Kozlov. But Mr. Kozlov had been plainly shown the hardened temper of official Washington toward the Soviet Union and, in some instances, as in Detroit, local officials had turned a cold shoulder.
Correspondents traveling with the Soviet visitor had recorded Mr. Kozlov's awareness of the situation and his annoyance with it. It was feared that Soviet officials might retaliate in kind when the Nixon party moved about Russia.
A letter writer indicates that in the past, as presently, whenever DNC chairman Paul Butler had unleashed an attack on Southern Democratic conservatives, those same Democrats had taken the position that Mr. Butler was merely "hired help" and did not "run" the party. Recently, on the floor of Congress, Congressman William Dorn of South Carolina had said of Mr. Butler: "Lately the philosophy he expounds is that of the National Socialists, the collectivists and the Fascists. He evidently thinks all of the thinking and planning of the Democratic Party should be done by himself and his liberal gang." She finds that if Mr. Butler was so distasteful to the South and was mere hired help, then they ought fire him. "Or would a test of strength simply point out the fact that, while stubborn Southerners refuse to leave the Democratic Party—the Democratic Party has most assuredly left them."
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