The Charlotte News
Thursday, March 19, 1959
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Moscow that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had urged this date a broad-based conference of all nations which had taken part in the war against Nazism, with the aim of concluding a peace treaty with Germany. He called attention to the President's proposal on Monday night that a summit conference be held during the summer provided a prior foreign ministers meeting could begin negotiations regarding the Berlin crisis. Mr. Khrushchev said at a specially called press conference: "We appeal to the governments of all nations which took part in the war against Hitlerite Germany to sit down at the negotiation table and settle pressing problems, to conclude a peace treaty with Germany." His tone appeared mild. He had made a similar proposal the prior January in a note to 27 other countries which had fought Nazi Germany. The West had rejected that proposal and in turn had asked the Soviet Union to take part in a foreign ministers conference in Geneva or Vienna with both East and West Germans in attendance, to prevent the German issues from setting off a new war. Mr. Khrushchev on this occasion appeared to have seized upon the President's Monday remark as a starting point for a new attempt to make a summit conference a reality. He had then added that if the West was "seriously ready" for talks, the Soviet Union would not hold up matters.
In Lexington, Ky., an attorney for strike-bound coal operators had appealed to the President this date to send Federal troops to eastern Kentucky to restore law and order. The attorney had asked that operators in Perry, Knott, Letcher and Pike Counties be given an audience to present their case. He said that citizens of those counties lived in mortal fear for their lives and that they wanted personally to present to the President the "immediate, urgent and dire need" for U.S. Army troops in the area to restore and preserve order. Coal operators in Pike County had asked Governor A. B. Chandler for National Guardsmen the previous day, but had been turned down, with the Governor indicating that the situation did not warrant such deployment. The attorney had signed the telegram to the President as the representative of small truck operators in the four counties, and of the Pike County Independent Coal Operators Association. More than 7,000 United Mine Workers had struck the eastern Kentucky coalfields to back up their demands for a $24.25 per day payroll scale, an increase of two dollars per day. After the Governor had refused the plea for the National Guard, the Pike County Coal Operators Association said that it would seek relief by asking for a restraining order against the UMW. The Association, with some 300 members, reaffirmed its decision not to sign the new contract raising the basic wage from $22.25 to $24.25, saying that they intended to halt their mining operations until the court decided on the order. Advised of the Association's plan, the president of the UMW District 30 had commented that he was confident that they would obtain fair and impartial treatment from all concerned. He said that the union was "a law-abiding organization and will abide by whatever decision the courts hand down today." The issue in the strike went deeper than the wage dispute. Some operators said that the UMW and the large coal firms were trying to put the small owners out of business, pointing the finger of suspicion at the protective wage clause, which forbade union mines from buying or processing coal from pits not paying union scale. If strictly enforced, it would squeeze out many small operators who would have no market for their coal. An owner of a Letcher County non-union mine, which had produced a million tons the previous year, had said that it was not a fight for high wages but one by the big coal operators and the UMW to eliminate the truck mine industry. The bituminous coal industry was faced with a diminishing market as petroleum and natural gas lines expanded. U.S. mines had produced 630.5 million tons of coal in 1947, compared with a 1957 output of 490 million tons. Kentucky production had slipped from 84 million tons in 1947 to 75 million in 1957.
In Glendive, Mont., it was reported that ice gorges damming the Yellowstone River this date had sent floodwaters rolling into the oil town. Hundreds of eastern Montana oilfield workers' house trailers had been hauled to safety on higher ground in a swiftly organized mass evacuation. All east-west traffic had been blocked on cross-country U.S. Highway 10 and detours north or south entailed several hundred miles. Flood levels had risen as ice gorges formed and broke loose. It was the worst flood for the area in more than two decades, but no casualties had been reported.
In Broadbeach, Australia, evangelist Billy Graham had called off this date his plan to speak to a teenagers' all-night pajama party, following a talk with the local police commissioner. The evangelist said that he had not fully understood all of the implications. It had started when Reverend Graham, in the town for a holiday break in his Australian preaching tour, had found a good word to say for the teenagers whose pajama parties and drinking sprees had been worrying local residents in the community, along Australia's "Gold Coast". He said: "The desire of young people to attend such parties is due to boredom… God can give youngsters adventure and new frontiers to conquer. The most successful meetings of my Australian campaign have been with teenagers." A group of teenagers responded with an invitation to him to address them at a pajama party which they were throwing this night and the Reverend Graham said that he would be delighted. The Queensland police commissioner had then telephoned him from Brisbane, refusing to say what he had told Reverend Graham, but indicating that he had left the decision entirely up to him. The evangelist then issued a statement saying that he would not attend, adding: "This decision was made after a discussion with representatives of church life and with the police commissioner. I had not fully understood all the implications involved. I think it would be better if I could speak to them in a different setting, and teach more of Gold Coast youth." Nevertheless, 500 spectators had turned up at the pajama party at a nearby hotel and found police checking for liquor at the door, coupled with a notice which said: "Dr. Billy Graham has been asked by police not to attend."
In Charleston, W. Va., it was reported that police had thrown desperation resources into the search this date for a crazed ex-convict who had kidnaped a frantic mother and her three children, threatening to torture and kill them unless Governor Cecil Underwood released a personal enemy of the former convict from the State penitentiary so that the kidnaper could kill him. The Governor had flown to Washington this date, as previously planned, to meet with Federal Highway officials, declining comment, saying that the case was in the hands of the State police and that they had full authority to act. A note penned by the ex-convict said: "Only you have the power to save them from certain death, by granting my demands. I don't want money. I want vengeance." State police said that the man was an extremely dangerous mental case. In the rambling five-page note, he had mentioned a convict with whom he had served time for armed robbery. He had demanded that only the FBI work on the case. He had entered the home of a family early on Wednesday night on the pretense of wanting to use the telephone, had then produced a pistol and threatened to kill the whole family. He had bound the man and his wife, and their three children, ages 5 to 10, then gagged each one. He had ignored the wife's mumbled pleas to release the gag and instead composed his note addressed to the Governor. He had then herded the mother and her three frightened children into his 1955 model automobile, leaving the father tied up in the family home. Eventually, the father had broken free and notified authorities.
It was reported that radio had suffered an eight-hour blackout in Charleston on the biggest local news story in months, that of the kidnaping, but that area stations had accepted the situation with uncomplaining cooperation. When the news had broken the previous night regarding the abduction, radio stations were asked by State police to withhold the story. The ban had been ordered because of the abductor's threat that he would torture the children if police were notified. The ban was lifted early during the current morning, with State police explaining that the news was on radio networks and in published newspapers. A captain of the State police said that radio news early in the morning might alert drivers via their car radios to be on the lookout for the abductor's car.
Near Xenia, O., a freight train had plowed into a station wagon carrying ten passengers in a rail crossing accident near the town on Wednesday, killing all ten, including eight Girl Scouts. The car had been dragged 50 feet along the tracks and the body of the 44-year old driver had been found 75 feet beyond her car. Her daughters had been among the eight Girl Scouts who had been killed. Another adult in the car, a 39-year old woman, was also killed. They were returning home from a library in Xenia where they had been studying for merit badges. They lived in a rural community suburb between Xenia and Dayton.
In Asheville, N.C., it was reported that a Trailways bus carrying 16 passengers had plowed through guardrails on U.S. Highway 74 at Hickory Nut Gap about 15 miles east of Asheville early on this morning and had plunged down a ten-foot embankment into a pasture, injuring six persons. The driver, of Charlotte, had refused to say what might have caused the accident, but several passengers said that they heard a loud bang just before the mishap and then the front of the bus had started bouncing and had swerved to the right side of the road and over the embankment, landing on its right side. An Army private, on his way to Fort Bragg on the bus, said that there were screams and confusion as the passengers were tossed to the right side of the bus. He said that the driver kicked out the right side of the windshield and opened the emergency door near the rear of the bus, that someone had opened a window and a few of the passengers had climbed out there. The driver said that the bus was en route to Charlotte when the accident took place. Many of the passengers, including most of the injured, had taken refuge in nearby farmhouses while awaiting the arrival of ambulances.
In Raleigh, it was reported that judiciary committees in the State House and State Senate had heard widely divergent matters of business this date, which had included labeling of a Fayetteville retirement home as unsafe and the killing of a bill for daylight savings time. The State property control officer had spoken on the Confederate Women's Home at Fayetteville before the Senate Judiciary Committee, saying that new quarters were available at the Eastern North Carolina Sanatorium at Wilson. Sentimental attachment for the present location had held up approval of the transfer by the home's board of directors. The Committee, considering a bill to extend for a decade the life of the home, had voted to invite the board to appear two weeks hence to explain its position. Without action by the Legislature, the home would cease operation the following January 1. The bill presently before the Committee would extend the date to 1970. There were presently 43 women receiving care at the home, with their age ranging between 73 and 95. The State property control officer said that the home was presently a fire hazard and that in the event of fire, it would be doubtful whether some of the bedridden women could be evacuated. The building at the Wilson Tuberculosis Sanatorium was available because of a lightened load of tuberculosis patients. The State property control officer said that the transfer would cost no additional money as $35,000 allocated by the 1957 Legislature to repair the present building could be used, as that money had not been spent because it was impossible to repair the building while it was occupied. A House Judiciary Committee had killed a bill which would place North Carolina on daylight savings time, voting 6 to 4 to return the measure to the House with an unfavorable report. Two-thirds of the House membership would be required to bring the bill out of its unfavorable status. The state's outdoor drama and agricultural representatives had spoken against the proposal at a hearing on Tuesday, both groups indicating that daylight savings time would be detrimental to their interests.
Julian Scheer of The News reports that replacing live ducks, which youngsters liked to receive on Easter morning with their baskets and eggs, would be stuffed ducks, currently on sale in Charlotte until sold out. The live ducklings had been put to sleep, stuffed and offered for sale. The two or three dozen offered to the public in Charlotte had quickly sold out. For 59 cents, one could get one for one's child, with original feathers, looking like a duck, feeling like a duck, and was a duck, except for the fact that it was dead, thus presumably did not quack like a duck. A saleslady in a local store had said: "They really sold well. We could have sold many more, I think." When questioned about it, the store's merchandise manager had flipped through his invoices and expressed surprise at the purchase. "Good golly, I sure wouldn't have okayed a purchase like that. Live ducks—stuffed? Heavens!" He had quickly pointed out that the item was "made" in Japan and imported by a New York State firm. He questioned what the Humane Society would say. Well, the ducks were already dead. There's nothing you could do about it now. It's not like the children's parents were going out and shooting the ducks in the park or something. Let the little children have their stuffed ducks.
If not, they will only gather together and, come next year, summon the mountain man
On the editorial page, "Charlotteans Can Clean up the Blight with One Big Package of Civic Zeal" indicates that a choice between progress and decay had been offered metropolitan Mecklenburg County the previous day by Charlotte's fledgling Urban Redevelopment Commission, indicating that the City could make full use of an opportunity to clean up the blighted Brooklyn section and present a bright face to the future, or could proceed without aggressive action and invite steady decline.
It urges that every reasonable effort had to be made to cure the cancer at the city's core and had to be a complete job, to provide a great metropolitan community of healthy, satisfied people, thriving industry and attractive landscapes, the only way the city could keep its date with destiny in the second half of the 20th Century.
The director of the Commission had disclosed, for the first time, some appalling statistics about the effect of Brooklyn's blight on the 9,000 people who lived in the 220-acre section proposed for renewal. The infant mortality rate was twice the average for the city as a whole and the active tuberculosis rate was 2.5 times the average. In addition, there were more than 1.5 times as many fire calls for the section than for the city as a whole and 15 percent of the city's arrests were made in the area. A total of 2,260 families lived in 1,689 buildings, 81.6 percent of which were substandard.
It indicates that even if Brooklyn were viewed strictly as an economic problem, the argument for renewal remained compellingly strong, as the return to the City in taxes for the entire area was only $11,867 per year for land and $52,570 for buildings. Compared to what the City received from single buildings in nearby non-blighted areas, for example, the Doctors' Building provided $13,989 in taxes, the Hawthorne Medical Center, $5,799, and the Kendall Building, $1,561.
The cost of maintaining a slum was always paid by those who lived outside it. In Baltimore, it had been estimated that slums consumed 45 percent of that city's revenue but paid only 6 percent of the taxes, often as little as $25 per dwelling. Urban renewal was locally planned, locally approved, and locally executed. The Federal Government merely helped local commissions do that part of the job which they could not do by themselves.
Charlotte taxpayers had been contributing for years to urban renewal by the Federal Government and now, for the first time since 1953, the community had an opportunity to obtain a return on its investment.
Urban renewal would require careful planning and widespread public support. A good beginning had been made and an initial planning grant had already been authorized by the U.S. Housing and Home Finance Agency. But the chairman of the Commission recognized fully that complete success was impossible unless the overwhelming majority of Charlotte residents were up to the challenge. He had said the previous day that the program would succeed in direct proportion to their ability to communicate it to the public.
It concludes that it would have to succeed, for the choice would have to be made for progress.
"A Small Bill with a Large Meaning" indicates that a small bill, in terms of expenditure, had been born quietly in the State Senate, calling for appropriation of $272,223 to provide for 75 "special-education teachers" during the ensuing two years, to expand the program of work with mentally retarded children.
There was a pressing need for more instructors and even 75 more would hardly fill that gap. It indicates that Charlotte was a good starting point. There was an embryonic City school program for the mentally retarded, but the classes were few and crowded, and the right teachers were hard to find, with the special equipment needed being difficult to purchase with the State's allocation of $279 per year per pupil. The County school system had no program at all.
Yet experts in the field of childcare reported that 3 percent of the school population needed special care. There were more than 950 such children in local schools at present, but hundreds of others remained at home, many of whom being county children whose parents could not bear the tuition cost of the City's special classes.
One bright light was that more attention had been focused on the problem, with the dark side being that many of the children would go unaided through school years before sufficient help was provided. The bill for additional special teachers was a step in the right direction, but it had to be remembered that the same provisions had been denied by the Advisory Budget Commission, and that additional money requests would throw the Governor's proposed budget further out of balance, thus to be resisted by the Administration.
The bill therefore would face a doubtful future, along with companion measures to help further the program for the mentally retarded.
It invites those who would deny the aid to visit a class for such children, checking with the teacher on what was needed, noting the crowded room and the waiting list of those to be helped. It suggests watching the children for just a few minutes and observing how they reacted to praise for simple accomplishment, remembering that those were the schools for the lucky few.
"Life in America" indicates that it thought it had heard all possible descriptions of marriage, but that the New York Court of Appeals had come up with a new one. In upholding a New York woman's claim for unemployment compensation when she had quit her job to get married, the Court had said in its opinion, in part, that marriage "ought to be treated as an illness…"
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "For the Pig's Ear", concedes the irrationalities of English, especially the differences in meaning without differences in spelling, citing as example that Webster's had given 24 meanings for the word front, 20 for ring, 20 for shot, 16 for stiff, 10 for mystery and 9 for honor, which, it quips, might clear up the mystery of why "'they are all honorable men.'" It believes that what was good enough for Geoffrey Chaucer and T. S. Eliot was good enough for it.
But mechanical brains refused to attach more than one meaning to a word, and since the machine was master of the age, the Patent Office was working hard on a machine-English. Thus there would be many new words, such as aforlap, which was a period of time which began after an action started and ended while the action continued; adorablem, meaning a visual appearance pleasing or displeasing when used with mal' and sli'; howby, meaning as the result of; resilrig, used with those modifiers to indicate degree of rigidity; tonafor, a period of time in which action ended completely.
It finds it enough to enable the reader to make sense of the sample of new prose which it had provided: "We walked aforlap the rain. The woods turned from mal'adorablem to sli'adorablem. Howby we got wet, and we were frightened by recuper lightning. We are no longer as mal-resilrig as once. It is merly the timafor of our walking." ("Merly" may be simply a misprint, but we retain it to avoid a charge of mal-adorablem in the rendering.)
It indicates that it ought also convince the reader that mechanical brains were subresilrig indeed, as they could not master that pig's ear of a language which humans turned into silk purses.
Drew Pearson indicates that the chief thing which would come from the meeting between British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and the President would be a summit conference, despite the President's lack of enthusiasm for it. The reason was that Mr. Macmillan had to have a summit conference if he was going to be re-elected Prime Minister, and even with a summit conference, his political sledding would be tough.
Going back to the 1955 summit conference in Geneva, he relates that an inside fact was that Secretary of State Dulles had reluctantly agreed to hold it, only after there had been British insistence to obtain Prime Minister Anthony Eden's re-election. The summit conference had been held and Mr. Eden had been re-elected, only to be knocked out of office by President Eisenhower as a result of the Suez crisis of 1956. Mr. Eden had never gotten over the shock of being ordered by President Eisenhower to get British troops out of Suez, and had resigned shortly thereafter. Now, four years later, another British election was due, probably in the fall, and once again the Conservative Party had to have a big international achievement to hold before the British electorate.
The Eisenhower Administration knew that all too well, and the Khrushchev Administration inside the Kremlin also knew that the Eisenhower Administration knew it. A good many weeks earlier, Kremlin observers had figured that they had an ace in the hole in the form of the British elections. For the one thing which the Eisenhower Administration definitely did not want was a British Labor Party victory. Neither did Premier Charles de Gaulle of France, nor did Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of West Germany. President Eisenhower did not want to have to do business in the future with Aneurin Bevan, critic of Washington and friend of Moscow, as the British foreign secretary. That was one reason why Premier Khrushchev had been talking tough, relying in part on his ace in the hole, the British elections.
Thus, to help the British Conservatives and also to postpone what could be a dangerous showdown regarding Berlin, the President had agreed to the summit conference which previously he had vigorously opposed.
People who passed by the home of Lincoln Rockwell in Arlington, Va., had been surprised to see through an open door a huge Nazi swastika with candles burning below it as if before an altar. Mr. Rockwell had been seeking to impeach Virginia Governor J. Lindsay Almond, Jr.
If one wanted to pick up a new car and were a Marine Corps instructor, one could do it by helicopter at taxpayer expense, at least that was what Lt. Col. Robert Hammond had done when he ordered a new Ford from the Merrill Motor Co. in Washington, Va. He had flown from Quantico in the helicopter, picked up his new car while a pilot had flown the helicopter back to Quantico.
Former Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey, who had made the famous statement the previous year about a budget which would "curl your hair", was still curling the President's hair over the budget, this time winning his battle. He was writing, telephoning and hunting with the President regarding the budget, and White House intimates said that he was more influential than any other single person.
Joseph Alsop indicates that the odds of Secretary of State Dulles resuming his duties, at least for awhile and on a limited basis, had almost miraculously improved, from 10 to 1 against it to an even chance or possibly better at present. He finds it somewhat heroic for the obstinate old man to bear his dreadful disease as though he were made of something other than human flesh. "An unquenchable will to live and function must surely be the secret."
Because Secretary Dulles had that will to live and function, it appeared more likely than not that he would end by returning to the State Department, with that decision probably being less than two weeks away, just before the end of March. That was because the Secretary had made a kind of private test out of his ability or inability to preside over the NATO Council's tenth anniversary meeting, which would begin in Washington on April 2. If he were able to join that meeting, he would continue in office, but if he felt unequal to the task, he had indicated to one or two confidantes that he would ask the President to accept his resignation. The timing of the test had been dictated by the timing of his treatment. He had tolerated the massive radiotherapy prescribed by his doctors much better than most men would, but it was still a radical treatment which was unavoidably upsetting and depressing while it continued. The treatment would end during the current week and another week to ten days would provide time for the treatment's severe side-effects to subside. At that point, the Secretary would know whether or not he could function normally again.
Meanwhile, it was also highly significant that the Secretary was known to have recommended Undersecretary of State Christian Herter to the President as his successor when and if the necessity would arise for him to step down. Under present circumstances, given the President's absolute confidence in Mr. Dulles, that recommendation was likely to be decisive.
The objection generally voiced to Mr. Herter was that he also was incapable of bearing the physical burden of the position because of his arthritis. Mr. Alsop, however, regards that as nonsense, as Mr. Herter was an exceptionally vigorous man who happened to have been crippled by arthritis, just as FDR had been crippled by polio. It was painful for him, as it had been for FDR, to stand erect for long periods or to walk great distances. But he was better off than President Roosevelt had been, for he was able to lead a normal daily life with his handicap amounting to simple inability to stand for hours on end at cocktail parties, which was not a serious handicap.
He finds that, plainly, Mr. Dulles had recommended Mr. Herter not only because of his confidence in his subordinate, but also because he wanted to preserve the continuity of U.S. foreign policy. Furthermore, if and when Mr. Dulles could not function any longer as Secretary of State, he meant to go on functioning as long as he possibly could as a high adviser to the President and the State Department, and the relationship with Mr. Herter as the new Secretary would be easy, whereas it might be difficult if the President brought in someone new from outside the Department.
Largely because of the false impressions conveyed by Mr. Herter's semi-crippled condition, Congress would probably prefer that the Undersecretary for economic affairs, Douglas Dillon, take over as Secretary, but the President had told Senators who had pressed that view that it was hardly possible to promote Mr. Dillon over Mr. Herter. In reality, the two formed one of the most intimate partnerships Washington had seen in some time and it was doubtful whether Mr. Dillon would accept promotion over Mr. Herter.
From all of those facts, a kind of design for future policy-making had emerged. If possible, Mr. Dulles would continue as Secretary, at least until the Berlin crisis had come to a head and subsided. In any case, while Mr. Dulles was spared, the foreign affairs of the country would be chiefly in the hands of Mr. Dulles, Mr. Herter and Mr. Dillon. If the President followed the advice of Mr. Dulles, the Herter-Dillon team would carry on to the end of the Administration.
Marquis Childs indicates that thanks to the Pentagon censor and the inevitable restraints imposed by the Berlin crisis, the current inquiry into defenses was unlikely to bring into focus the real nature of the dispute over the nation's preparedness or lack of it. The question posed was whether conventional forces had been so reduced for reasons of economy that the nation's capacity for limited warfare had been reduced dangerously close to zero and entire reliance placed on nuclear retaliation. In other words, was the choice between suicide and surrender?
General Maxwell Taylor, chief of staff of the Army, believed that the defense budget had to be 45 billion dollars per year for the ensuing five years if the Army was to overcome the grave deficiencies of recent years. It was 5 billion dollars more than the President's defense budget for 1960. General Taylor believed that it would enable the Army to carry out a minimum modernization, some of which had been spelled out in his testimony before the preparedness subcommittee chaired by Senator Lyndon Johnson. But the basic contention which he placed on the record in a speech the prior December was that 70 percent of the equipment of the Army had been from World War II, the Korean War or earlier. As a result, he had told an audience in Pasadena, Calif., that the Army needed second-generation missiles, light atomic weapons, improved conventional weapons, many new types of air and ground vehicles, and improved and newly designed electronic communications equipment. He said it was also vital to plan the contingent use of air and sea lifts for limited war. He indicated that the Army was equipped with the weapons of the last war to fight a new war on the ground, whereas the Russians had pushed modernization very far in their 175 ground divisions.
When he would retire at the end of June, General Taylor intended to take his case to the public, arguing first in a series of magazine articles and then in a book that "massive retaliation" was a strategic trap into which the U.S. had fallen, a deathtrap from which it had to extricate itself if it was to continue the leadership role in the Western coalition.
Mr. Childs suggests that it seemed that the odds were against his success, as the power of the aircraft industry was very great and if the President's economy wall was to be breached, whether with or without the consent of the President, it was likely that the additional money would go into missiles or aircraft. He suggests that how much interest the public was paying to the defense controversy was questionable.
Yet, General Taylor's effort, he indicates, ought not be entirely discounted. His predecessor chief of staff, General Matthew Ridgway, more than any single individual, had blocked those who had been bent on an atomic strike when the French had dug themselves into the futile jungle post of Dien Bien Phu in the Indochina war and the country's debt to him on that single account was great. General Ridgway had also made the case for a modernized Army of reasonable strength, and while he had not been reappointed to a second term as chief of staff, he had a wide and respectful hearing.
He indicates that what was coming from the current preparedness hearings ought leave Moscow in no doubt that the country would not retreat from Berlin, regardless of how grim the choice would be. But a choice between suicide and a border province in Iran or the China offshore islands was something quite different. It was the case for readiness to meet the limited challenge which General Taylor wanted to carry to the court of public opinion.
Doris Fleeson indicates that the Gridiron Club was an association of newsmen which annually offered an opportunity for an ambitious politician of each party to present him or herself for an influential audience of publishers, business leaders, Washington celebrities and the Washington press corps. Governor Pat Brown of California, who had spoken during the current year for the Democrats, had received high marks from all sides. He had been warned that his guests would also constitute themselves as judge and jury, and so had worked on his speech and put it over successfully.
Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York, who was in many ways Governor Brown's opposite in the Republican Party, had declined the invitation to speak. Revealingly, he had pleaded that his advisers thought that he was too new in office and too vulnerable also to the charge that he was already running for the presidency. It was further evidence, she finds, of how heavily Mr. Rockefeller leaned on the experts, a longtime family practice, which had paid off for them.
It appeared hardly fair to expect a familiar Washington face, the newly elected Republican House leader, Charles Halleck, to carry the ball against a fresh new man of such potent possibilities for the presidency as Governor Brown. Washington had already heard for years what Mr. Halleck had to say and he had said nothing new.
A presidential aspirant, who had already run the Gridiron gamut successfully, had assessed its importance by saying: "It won't help you to do well at the dinner, but it would hurt you to do badly." Most observers would agree that it was a reasonable estimate of the dinner's influence.
Governor Brown was remaining in Washington for a few days to touch a number of bases. He had breakfast with Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson and had lunch with Senator John F. Kennedy. It was understood that no one was so crude on such genial occasions as to mention the California presidential preference primary, around which Governor Brown's forces had erected signs to stay away, with the effect being almost to foreclose any Democratic candidate from coming to the national convention with a preponderance of delegates. The thought had been a frequent topic at the Kennedy strategy sessions and it had even led to proposals that he should enter the primary anyway, risking the displeasure of Governor Brown.
Supporters of Senator Kennedy professed to feel that he could defeat the Governor, pointing to the fact that Senator Estes Kefauver in that way had balked a tentative favorite-son move for then-State Attorney General Brown in 1952, though it was considerably harder to upset a Governor, particularly one who had won recently by a large margin. Governor Brown, however, was having troubles with the party organization regarding his policy of making merit appointments in the pattern of former Governor Earl Warren, on which he was modeling his Administration. The new Governor was also in something of a bind with the Council of Democratic Clubs, who constituted the hard-fighting Indians of the campaign wars.
The Democratic bill to abolish cross-filing in California had been amended to prohibit pre-primary endorsements by the Council, which said that it made the price too high, though abolition of cross-filing had been a long-cherished Democratic aim.
The Governor was also having Rockefeller-style tax troubles, and his primary stance the following year might depend on how he managed such difficulties.
A letter from the State Youth director of the Church of God indicates appreciation for the coverage of their recent convention by the newspaper and trusts that the future relationship with the newspaper would be as pleasant as it had been in the past.
A letter writer indicates that on March 14, he had read a letter to the editor regarding Congressman Charles Jonas. (That was unfortunately one of those letters which we abandoned for being unable to read the dim print.) He asks the previous writer whether, even though he owned his own home, if his employer offered him a free home with the same salary, he would take it or not, feeling sure that he would. He says that Mr. Jonas had always played good, clean politics, but that there were a few voters in Mecklenburg County who were ready to criticize him. He says that better should not be expected, "for Christ was criticized for His good work." The taxpayers had elected Mr. Jonas and would continue to do so whether the letter writer liked it or not. He believes that he would win with a larger majority in 1960 than he had in 1958, if he chose to run.
Let us make one point perfectly clear: Mr. Jonas was not Jesus.
A letter writer from Salisbury says that he did not like the idea of calling a child born out of wedlock illegitimate, as it had been his experience that God took care of such children and that they were often gifted beyond other children. He cites William the Conqueror and Julius Caesar as examples of children born out of wedlock, indicating that it would be difficult to find two more gifted men. He indicates that a child could not help being born out of wedlock, but the strangeness of the situation made the child have to think to understand the situation, and suggests that it was perhaps the reason why such children made their marks in the world.
While Willie the Conq was, Julie was not apparently born out of wedlock, though we were not present during the reigns of either to witness whether they were honorable men, as the writer assures, or bloodthirsty cretins bent on autocratic and cruel rule of their conquered enemies and those who resisted their will to power and acquisitive disposition.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.