The Charlotte News
Wednesday, July 15, 1959
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President had said this date at his press conference that present conditions in the steel strike did not warrant invoking Taft-Hartley in an effort to end it. He declined to speculate on when steel stockpiles might be reduced to a point which would imperil national defense. Taft-Hartley permitted the Government to seek a court order to end any work stoppage which the President determined was a threat to national security. Discussing the strike, which had commenced at midnight on Tuesday, the President again expressed hope that free bargaining between the steel companies and the union would result quickly in a new contract. The President was asked specifically to estimate, on the basis of his knowledge regarding steel stockpiles, how long the strike could continue before it interfered with defense production and he had replied that he could make no accurate estimate, but said that if all the inventories on hand would be used up, there would be a serious situation. A reporter asked whether the President thought, now that a strike was underway, that the Government ought pursue any different course in its efforts to head off a shutdown, and he had replied that he was convinced that the Government course was correct, that there should be free bargaining in such situations and if there were too much Government pressure, the bargaining was not free. He had then gone on to note that Taft-Hartley's provision that the Government might seek an 80-day injunction to all strikes imperiling national health and safety, was not present at the moment. He again called for management and union officials to display statesmanship and responsibility in their efforts to settle the strike, commenting that officials from both sides had agreed to meet this date with officials of the Federal Mediation Service.
In New York, it was reported that the United Steelworkers this date had proposed that the industry agree to submit strike issues to a fact-finding board to be headed by a neutral selected by Chief Justice Earl Warren of the Supreme Court. David McDonald, the union president, had made the proposal in a letter to the industry's four-man negotiating team, proposing that the industry and union agree to the fact-finding procedure to sift the facts involved in all strike issues. The union proposal was that the investigating board would be composed of a man named by the union, another by the industry and an impartial member to be named by Chief Justice Warren. A half-million Steelworkers, heeding the call of union leaders, had gone on strike after two months of contract negotiations which had gotten nowhere. The union had given no indication of retreating from its demand for higher wages and improved fringe benefits. The industry also stuck to its position that it could not increase production costs. Those had been the basic positions when negotiations had begun on the new contract ten weeks earlier and remained unchanged as the strike had begun. The walkout had shut off 90 percent of the country's steel-making capacity and threatened to slow down the entire economy, booming once more after a crippling recession. Steel companies not represented by the United Steelworkers and those with agreement on contract extensions comprised the other 10 percent of the industry unaffected by the strike. At the urging of the President, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service had arranged separate meetings during the afternoon in New York with representatives of the industry and the union. Mr. McDonald said that he would offer industry negotiators an undisclosed plan for settlement of the strike, but he guessed that they would turn it down, in a talk to some 2,000 cheering union members at U.S. Steel Corporation's Fairless plant near Morrisville, Pa., on Tuesday night. Promptly at midnight, and in some instances before that, workers had streamed in orderly fashion from mills across the country and picket lines were set up quickly.
Also in New York, it was reported that it might be some time before the Steelworkers on strike felt the economic pinch, though union officials might feel it sooner. Salaries of the union officials, including that of Mr. McDonald, who made $50,000 per year, stopped as soon as the strike had started. Steelworkers were paid on a delayed two-week basis and had two weeks pay coming, with an additional two weeks of vacation pay, which averaged $125 per week. Also, they could usually get credit in the steel towns for food and most other everyday necessities. The union did not pay strike benefits, but union funds were paid out to meet emergency needs of strikers and their families.
Julian Scheer of The News reports that only a small portion of the Charlotte and North Carolina labor force had been affected by the nationwide strike, but that the situation in the state could worsen considerably at the end of the month. Construction work and steel deliveries in the area had been little affected at present, but the situation could tighten within 60 days. Seventy-five Charlotte members of the United Steelworkers Union locals were off their jobs this date and 25 more were out in Raleigh, with the biggest portion of USW state membership to be affected possibly at the end of the month. Carolina Aluminum Co. of Badin, which employed 700 workers who were members of USW, had contract negotiations ongoing, which would expire at the end of the month, and if a contract agreement was not reached, those 700 might walk off the job. Such a move would be a big blow to the economics of Stanley County and the Piedmont section. Charlotte had three USW locals and each had about 25 members. Two USW locals were not impacted by the strike, as their contracts had not expired. The strike would have little effect in the area if it was not of long duration. Construction work in Charlotte would proceed on schedule, at least for the time being, with work on the YMCA Building at E. Morehead and South Boulevard, and on the new American Commercial Building on S. Tryon Street, to move ahead. The American Commercial Building would not need more structural steel until late November. Other local construction jobs had their steel on site.
Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, chairman of the Senate Select Committee investigating improper activities in management and labor, said this date that it was clear that Jimmy Hoffa would never clean up corruption in the Teamsters Union. He made the comments after the Committee had concluded on Tuesday a 2 1/2 year investigation of Mr. Hoffa and scandals in the Teamsters. As a parting shot, Committee counsel Robert F. Kennedy had denounced Mr. Hoffa to his face as a taker of payoffs from employers. Mr. Hoffa had fired back, "I'll tell you that's a lie." Mr. Kennedy said that he had no plan for further questioning of Mr. Hoffa, but said that the Committee still could change its mind and investigate the Teamsters further. In hopeful tones, Mr. Kennedy told reporters that the board of monitors appointed by the U.S. District Court to help police the Teamsters could "make the problem academic" by removing Mr. Hoffa as the union's president. In a separate interview, Senator McClellan said that he felt sure that the inquiry at least had "fortified the monitors in their purpose to supervise and direct the cleanup." He also said, "Hoffa and his henchmen by their performance have made it crystal clear there can be no cleanup from within the union." The inquiry had ended just about where it had started. Mr. Hoffa had made lengthy replies to every question which the Committee had asked, but they had contained little information. He testified that he would move "in due course" to deal with charges that gangsters, racketeers, extortionists and narcotics peddlers had risen to power as his aides in important union offices. Senator McClellan said that the final hearing had dramatized one of the big problems of the whole investigation, that being getting real answers to questions. Mr. Hoffa had parried demands that he help disclose the source of $10,000 in 50-dollar bills which had figured in the testimony. He suggested to the Committee that they ask Owen Bert Brennan, his right-hand man in Michigan Teamster affairs. Mr. Brennan, president of Detroit Local 337, had invoked the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. Committee investigators said that the $10,000 had been traced from Mr. Brennan to lawyers for Bernard Spindell, a co-defendant with Mr. Hoffa in a 1957 wiretap conspiracy trial in which both men had been acquitted. Mr. Spindell had also refused to provide any answers, pleading the Fifth, as had Walter Schuler, a business agent in Mr. Brennan's local.
The U.S. Court of Claims this date had upheld the claim of the Dixon-Yates combine for damages because the Government had canceled its controversial power contract. Dividing 3 to 2, the court had rejected the Government's contention that the activities of Adolph Wenzell had constituted a conflict of interest, ruling that Dixon-Yates ought be reimbursed for out-of-pocket costs before the contract had been canceled. The majority opinion said that the court saw "not the slightest conflict of interest in Wenzell's position." The court had awarded $1,867,545, about what Dixon-Yates had finally sought. Originally, the claim had been for about 3.5 million dollars. Mr. Wenzell had served as a consultant to the Budget Bureau at the same time he he was a salaried official of the First Boston Corp., which had become the financial agent for Dixon-Yates interests. It was on that ground that the Justice Department had contended that the Government ought be relieved of paying anything to Dixon-Yates as a result of the contract cancellation. The contract, entered into by the Atomic Energy Commission at the time it was headed by Admiral Lewis Strauss, had called for a 107 million dollar power plant at West Memphis, Ark.
Congress faced the issue of whether
it ought pass a law controlling the hunting down of wild mustangs on
the Western ranges. Commercial hunters, using airplanes and trucks,
presently ran the beasts to exhaustion, catching them and selling
them to factories to make cat and dog food. Almost a dozen witnesses
were on tap before a House Judiciary subcommittee which was
considering the bill. They included Congressmen from districts where
wild horses were somewhat scarce, in Tennessee and Wisconsin, and
spokesmen for humane groups and the Garden Club of America. Also, a
one-woman lobby named "Wild Horse Annie" would be present.
She was Velma Johnston from the Double Lazy Heart Ranch near Reno,
Nev., who had been working since 1952 for controls on wild horse
roundups. She conceded that there had once been too many wild horses
overrunning the ranges, but that now their herds were down to about
20,000 head and faced extinction. She supported the bill by
Representative Walter Baring of Nevada to ban the use of aircraft or
motor vehicles for hunting wild horses or burros on public lands and
to outlaw pollution of watering holes to trap the animals.
Representatives J. Carlton Loser of Tennessee and Alvin O'Konski of
Wisconsin had introduced the same bill, conceding that their
districts had no wild horses. Representative Merwin Coad of Iowa backed a
bill to prohibit capturing or killing of wild horses for commercial
use on public lands, saying that it would take the profit out of the
slaughter. Mrs. Johnston had told newsmen the previous day that wild
horses presently sold for about 6.5 cents per pound
In Los Angeles, it was reported that Lt. Col. James G. Taylor, who had once taught Dwight Eisenhower as a young cadet at West Point, would be buried this date, having died on Saturday at age 74.
In Hurricane, W.Va., a 46-year old man of Boone, N.C., had been struck on the head by a piece of rock and killed on Tuesday while working on Interstate 64 near the town, while acting as foreman for a company doing the work.
On the editorial page, "A Bad Way To Balance the Budget" finds that the big boost in Charlotte's water-sewer charges during the week by the City Council had been excessive, going beyond what was actually needed for the current operation of water and sewer facilities.
It finds that when taxes were disguised as service charges, the average householder was not only in the dark about how much additional revenue was being provided but was also denied the privilege of getting credit for it on the income tax form, and in addition, was paying for water-sewer services at a higher rate than the large industrial users. To make matters worse, the rate hikes would go into effect at a time when water consumption of the individual householder would still be high.
It concludes that it was a bad move at a bad time and that some second thoughts were definitely in order at City Hall.
"College's Future Is in Charlotte's Hands" indicates that Charlotte College had a rosy future, as found by a firm of New York educational consultants who had presented their ideas about the institution's swift, steady development the previous day. But the extent of the rosiness would depend completely on the depth of the community's dedication to the cause of public-supported higher education. The college's future would be expressed in the motives and the circumstances which shaped its course as well as in the tangible evidence of its progress.
Mecklenburg County residents would have to want a great community college and they would have to be willing to make occasional sacrifices for it, to give it the fiscal support it deserved and to insist that the state did its share, to look upon it with appropriate pride as their own.
The college was barely on the threshold of its most critical stage of development. Charlotte was called the most under-colleged city of its size in the country, but could have a superb four-year community college large enough to take care of its needs or it could rock along with a modest junior-college program indefinitely. It asserts that the city needed a four-year institution. It also indicates that the State ought put up a substantial share of the money to establish a four-year college in the city, that young people in the area could be educated more economically at Charlotte College than at a State-supported dormitory college or university elsewhere.
It pledges its best efforts to the cause, but indicates that broad public backing would be necessary, and invites that support because the community's most important resource was its young people, and their contribution to the community's future would depend largely on the education which Mecklenburg would offer them.
In 1965, Charlotte College would become UNC-Charlotte, a four-year institution, a part of the Greater University.
"Mum's the Word" indicates that secrecy was so much a part of the bureaucratic tradition in Washington that even the non-secrets were secrets. It offers as Exhibit "A", the opening sentence from the censored transcript of a Navy commander's testimony before the House Space Committee: "Mr. Chairman, gentlemen, as the admiral has said, the unclassified code name for this project is ***, and the ***."
"Dr. Harding's Progressive Heritage" indicates that Dr. Harry P. Harding had been a "school man", in all the dignity and pride of that somewhat old-fashioned term. It finds that if the state produced at present the more polished word, "educators", the state had once produced a great generation of school men of whom Dr. Harding had been one of the most distinguished.
To understand the distinction, the history book had to be leafed backward to the decade after the Civil War had ended when Dr. Harding had been born down east, the son of a Confederate major. The world in which he had spent his boyhood was crowded, as Walter Hines Page had once said, with ghosts which retarded progress.
Yet if it was an old world, by present reckoning, it was not a world empty of powerful ideas, one of which had captured Dr. Harding's imagination as a boy, that being that the escape from the ghosts which retarded progress lay in public education, the idea of the "evangels of education", men such as Edwin Alderman, Alexander Graham, who had brought Dr. Harding to Charlotte, and Charles McIver—each of whom have dormitories named after them on the UNC campus in Chapel Hill. They had believed, almost mystically, in education and believed in being, first, last, and always "school men".
Dr. Harding, who was to build for Charlotte one of the finest school systems in the South, had acknowledged the single, powerful idea of those men as his inspiration. Those "evangels of education", among whom Dr. Harding, it finds, had to be placed to be understood, also possessed practical imaginations. The way to progress lay by way of education and the way to education lay by way of bond issues, buildings, expanding curricula and a sense of professional honor among school teachers. All of those things Dr. Harding had tirelessly advocated during his entire lifetime.
When he had died during the week, the evidence of his influence had been plentiful, and, significantly, Charlotte had just taken another step forward with consolidation and new school bonds. That had borne witness that Dr. Harding's progressive heritage would live vigorously after him.
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "Hobbes and Doubting Thomases", indicates that the Charlotte News, "that bouncy newspaperman's newspaper," had lost no time pinning back the ears of "all us perspiring editors trying to bring a touch of Thomas Jefferson to the masses."
The New York Herald Tribune, the Washington Post and "the usually resourceful savants of the Greensboro Daily News" had come under the piercing scrutiny of the News editors on Independence Day. "(And who else save the descendants of the signers of the Mecklenburg Declaration should exercise this prerogative over the inner workings of the mind of T. Jefferson and his Declaration?)"
It finds that it had fared poorly because the old Machiavellian of the 18th Century, Thomas Hobbes, had crept into their list of Thomas Jefferson's idea men, it having only said that Mr. Jefferson was "steeped in philosophies of Hobbes and Locke…" But that had been enough to send the News hustling to its encyclopedias to give the Greensboro newspaper further moralizing on that notorious English moralizer, quoting from the News piece.
It indicates that Mr. Hobbes was anathema to Mr. Jefferson, but Mr. Jefferson, champion of the free mind, had little regard for anathema. "He read 'Leviathan' like Winston Churchill read 'Mein Kampf.' T. Jefferson had a facility for distilling ideas of others, taking fragments and using them with a different twist. Thus, when Hobbes wrote that men 'are by nature equal and self-seeking,' Mr. Jefferson used only part of the idea—but a powerful part."
It indicates that later Mr. Jefferson had made it clear beyond doubt that everything else which Mr. Hobbes had believed was in direct antithesis to his own thinking. He had expressed that forcefully in a letter to John Adams, written in the twilight of his life, about the philosophy of an obscure French philosopher, Destutt Tracy: "I gather from his other works that he adopts the principle of Hobbes, that justice is founded in contract solely, and does not result from the construction of man. I believe, on the contrary, that it is instinct and innate, that the moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing; as a wise creator must have seen to be necessary in an animal destined to live in society; that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another;… Virtue does not consist in the act we do, but in the end it is to effect… The essence of virtue is in doing good to others."
Thus, it finds, Mr. Jefferson abhorred the ideas of Mr. Hobbes, but had read them and was steeped in them, and had even borrowed part of them for his own purpose.
"Whew!
"Charlotte News, would you kindly refrain from luring us into such jungles of pedantry again?"
Drew Pearson indicates that while General Maxwell Taylor, recently retired chief of staff of the Army, had been testifying before Congress regarding the need of more military manpower, a record number of enlisted men in the armed forces had been serving as cooks, orderlies, house boys and handymen for the brass. The column had uncovered the fact that the total for the Washington area alone was 1,500.
The 35 Air Force generals assigned to headquarters command had 83 airmen to wait on them as cooks, drivers, flight stewards, mess attendants and orderlies. The Army had 67 servants to wait on 143 general officers. The Navy had 54 enlisted men serving 105 admirals. And the Marines had 20 enlisted men assigned to 25 generals. That did not include 103 Army, 98 Navy, 55 Air Force, and eight Marine servants who worked in the officers' dining rooms and quarters. In addition, a total of 368 Army, 17 Navy, and 306 Air Force enlisted men were assigned as chauffeurs in the Washington area.
Congressman Frank Kowalski of Connecticut had become a hero to thousands of GI's because he had focused the spotlight on the "servantude" of enlisted men. Mr. Kowalski had spent 30 years in the Army, working his way up to colonel. The column had talked to G.I. servants whose only duties were menial personal services for the brass, some doing little more than shining shoes, pouring liquor, pressing pants and running errands.
Sp-4 Elwood Hooten, of the Second Armored Division at Fort Hood, Tex., had maintained a record of over 250 hours spent in domestic service for his commanding officer, Col. John Hector, now a staff officer for the Sixth Army in San Francisco. The soldier had washed and waxed the car, swept, mopped and waxed the floor, mowed the lawn, cleaned the colonel's teenage son's quarters, waxed and polished furniture, cleaned the bathroom and scrubbed porches. Two days prior to being detailed to that domestic duty, he had submitted an application for an overseas assignment, disapproved by the division headquarters on the ground that a critical shortage of trained personnel existed in the soldier's specialty. His orders had been "to keep Col. Hector happy." To do that, he had been obliged once to wash the colonel's car while the rest of his unit received the day off. The colonel claimed that most of the housekeeping chores had been assigned while he was away from Fort Hood for three months, and that subordinates had assigned the soldier to keep the house in shape while he was gone.
At Fort Carson, Okla., Capt. Carl Pruitt had assigned a 26-man detail to help Col. Lynell Green, the commanding officer, to clear and clean his house, prior to his reassignment during the current month to Iceland. Col. Green acknowledged to the column that the detail had reported for work as ordered, but he claimed that he had sent the men back, acknowledging having used "a few GI's" to help clear out the house, their help having been charged as official duty. Those who had reported for lawn-mowing duty, he claimed, worked during their spare time and were paid out of his pocket.
He indicates that he would cover more waste of military manpower in an early column.
Joseph Alsop indicates that five years earlier, Representative George Bender of Ohio had been chosen by the Republicans of that state to run for the unexpired Senate term of the greatest Republican Senator of modern times, Robert Taft. As Mr. Bender had said at the time, he had mainly owed his nomination to the other satrap of Ohio Republicanism, Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey. Mr. Bender had served four years as chairman of the Cuyahoga County Republican Organization, in which Mr. Humphrey was, and still was, the great influence behind the scenes, Mr. Bender being Mr. Humphrey's man.
But according to the record newly made by Senator John McClellan's Sect Committee on improper labor practices, Mr. Bender had some interesting additional supporters in 1954. He had been the chairman of the House anti-racketeering subcommittee at that time and the body had gone into Ohio during the campaign to investigate, among others, William Presser and Louis "Babe" Triscaro, Jimmy Hoffa's local bosses of the Teamsters Union. Early in October, Mr. Bender, Mr. Presser and Mr. Triscaro had been glaring at one another across the committee table, but just prior to election day, Mr. Presser had told an executive board meeting of the Ohio conference of Teamsters that the union's support would be switched to Mr. Bender.
One of those present, who had been hard at work for Mr. Bender's Democratic opponent, had testified to his extreme surprise. Nonetheless, by Mr. Presser's command, the Ohio Teamsters had been briskly transformed into voters for Mr. Bender. Shortly after the election, Mr. Presser and Mr. Triscaro had gone to Washington to make their final appearances before the Bender anti-racketeering subcommittee, after which, Mr. Presser had happily boasted in a public speech that the hearings were "over" without anyone being "cited for any contempts—no perjuries!" In the same speech, Mr. Presser had declared that "especially during the latter portion of the hearings" he had found "a friend" on the anti-racketeering subcommittee, indicating, "His name was George Bender."
Almost at the same time, Mr. Presser's spokesman in Cincinnati had asked the local Teamsters' joint council for a donation to help meet the expense of the defense of Mr. Presser and Mr. Triscaro before the Bender subcommittee.
An anti-Presser, anti-Hoffa Teamsters leader, the head of a local milk union, James Luken, had at that point objected that the lawyers for Mr. Presser and Mr. Triscaro had already been paid out of union funds in the regular course. The spokesman for Mr. Presser, George Starling, had said in reply, as sworn to by Mr. Luken, that "other money was spent to pull certain strings to see that these charges were dropped."
A little later, some quite remarkable things had begun to happen to the bank account of the finance committee promoting Mr. Bender for the Senate. The committee, headed by businessmen of the most gilt-edged type, had filed an official report disclosing contributions of $95,000. The record now showed that the actual receipts were larger than those officially disclosed by nearly $101,000, at least $30,000 of which had been accounted for by a series of large deposits, all in currency, which had begun in December, 1954.
Mr. Bender had been beaten in the 1956 election and then found new employment as chairman of the special commission named by Mr. Hoffa to whitewash the Teamsters, receiving $58,000 to date for his services.
The previous week, "his jowls wobbling with self-righteousness", the aging politician who had once been Mr. Humphrey's man and was now Jimmy Hoffa's man, had made an extraordinary appearance before Senator McClellan's Committee. He told of naming a prostitute as a Republican precinct captain in her red-light district and then added, "You don't have to become a prostitute yourself, but you have to get their votes." The purpose of his appearance was not to give those little tips on politics, but to deny that the facts spread on the committee record had any meaning at all. He did not challenge the facts themselves, just indicating that it was "a damnable lie" that he had received a payoff from the Teamsters.
Mr. Alsop indicates that the strange story was worth bringing together in one place for two principal reasons, first, that one could imagine the kind of hullabaloo which would now be ongoing if a former henchman of a super-respectable Democrat, for instance, Adlai Stevenson, were revealed in the same posture as the former henchman of the most super-respectable Republican. Second, the story hinted at one of the main ills of the Republican Party, peculiar taste in politicians of many very big, very important American businessmen.
A letter writer indicates that the American housewife ought be in the front ranks of the battle to hold the budget line, that it was the American on a fixed income who took the real punishment during inflationary times. Not even an escalator clause in union contracts could keep up with galloping inflation. Senior citizens living in retirement on a pension found it harder to get by on a modest annuity. She indicates that under the present Republican Administration, the income of the average family had risen by 20 percent and the cost of living had risen less than 9 percent, thus providing more than 11 percent in increased purchasing power, while under the Truman Administration, cost-of-living had risen 50 percent. She finds that further inflation would simply mean a tightening of the cost-price squeeze and wonders how many Americans when making out their taxes realized that they were paying less than they otherwise would because two Republican Congresses had given them the only tax reductions they had received in a generation. She hopes that housewives of the country would learn the facts as they applied to the grocery baskets before they would go to the polls in 1960, and that if they did, there would be a Republican victory, which would mean the greatest good for the greatest number.
Ho, ho, ho… She seems to forget that the worst recession since the great Depression was only recently subsiding after 18 months during 1957-58. Some of us, whose family experience was personally touched by that recession, will not forget it. Guess we had to be Republican to appreciate all that wonderful economy.
A letter writer from Gaffney, S.C., comments on a previous letter writer from Huntersville whom he regards as having taken a personal affront to some of this writer's recent comments anent the relations between the black and white races. "While I have no desire to engage in a feud with her, I would like to see logical arguments instead of the 'you're a liar' type of thing. For instance, in her letters I've noted several statements or claims which will not hold up under analysis:..." He proceeds to enumerate four such claims, that blacks did not want to live or think like the white man, that the white man was holding blacks back, that blacks could not get a decent education because they could not earn enough money, and that the Florida rape case involving four white men who had attacked an 18-year old Florida A&M coed had been played up for all it was worth, mostly through the Northern press and radio and television networks, but that a New York incident involving six black youths assaulting a white schoolgirl had not been mentioned on television or had not attained the same front-page prominence. He provides his counterpoints, appearing to blink the realities in favor of citing various celebrities among blacks who had made the grade in white culture, not really the point, as there have always been tokens, even during the Civil War, even during slavery.
A letter writer indicates that the headline for the letters to the editor column of July 11, quoting one letter writer as favoring giving DNC chairman Paul Butler to the Republican Party, had given her a shock, finding that the previous letter writer must have been kidding. She finds that Mr. Butler appeared to know quite a bit about the philosophies of the two major political parties and seemed to be aware of the fact that the Southern conservative Democrats had the same philosophy of government as did the Republicans, having on several occasions told the Southern conservative Democrats to "get lost". "We Republicans certainly welcome all conservatives in one party where they will feel much more at home than with the 'New Dealers' who control the Democratic Party today."
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