The Charlotte News
Tuesday, April 21, 1959
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from London that British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had written Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev supporting President Eisenhower's proposal of a graduated ban on nuclear weapons testing below an altitude of 30 miles. Sources close to the British Government said that Prime Minister Macmillan had told Premier Khrushchev that Britain would prefer a more comprehensive test ban, but said that if it was impossible at present, it would back the limited agreement of the type proposed by the U.S. and Britain the previous week at the Geneva conference regarding a nuclear test ban. The Russians had shown a negative attitude initially regarding the Western proposal, terming it a deviation from the agreed purpose of the conference. But Western delegates at Geneva believed that Moscow's final word on the proposal was yet to be determined. Details of the President's appeal to Mr. Khrushchev had been made public as the President had arranged to end a two-week vacation at the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia. White House press secretary James Hagerty had said that Mr. Khrushchev had not replied to the President's letter, made public on Monday night only after a Soviet official had talked about it, apparently by accident, in Geneva where East-West talks had been blocked by stalemate since the previous October. The letter had been sent to Mr. Khrushchev on April 13, the same day U.S. negotiators had outlined the new U.S. proposal in Geneva. The President said in effect in the letter that a partial agreement would be better than none, and "these negotiations must not be permitted completely to fail." He said that a simplified control system to detect any test explosions in the atmosphere could easily be developed from expert recommendations already available. Test explosions in the atmosphere caused more radioactive fallout than those conducted underground or in outer space, two types of testing which would not be banned under the latest U.S. proposal. But with agreement on the one phase, which the President had found to be the most important, negotiators could continue working toward a general ban, according to the President. In Washington, Senators Albert Gore of Tennessee and Frank Church of Idaho had praised the President's actions. Senator Church said that it meant that the latest proposal "is not a tactical maneuver calculated to give us some transient advantage at the conference table, but a serious proposition, earnestly made."
In Washington, it was reported that spaceflight forecasts were coming from all over the capital, everything from sending mice into orbit within a month to sending a man to the moon and back within eight years—not a bad prediction given that the Apollo manned program would be suspended for 21 months after the tragedy on the launchpad in January, 1967, delaying the moon landing mission until July, 1969. Project Nova, Project Score, Project Courier, Project Transit, Project Tiros, and Project Midas, were among the names being floated, each with an exciting idea to ignite the imagination. The mice-in-space forecast had come Monday from Roy Johnson, director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency, in a speech to a Republican women's group. He had also hopefully outlined most of the other projects due for later development, saying that the Discoverer II satellite, launched April 13 and nearing the end of its orbital journey, had been a "truly fantastic success", adding that they now planned to launch Discoverer III with a biomedical space traveler. He did not specify mice as the space traveler, but informed sources said that one or more of the creatures would be aboard. He said that the Discoverer III launch would come within a month, but other sources were not quite that definite. The mice would be America's first attempt to put living animals into orbit. The Army, on December 13, 1958, had sent a monkey up about 300 miles in the nosecone of a Jupiter missile, but orbit was not attempted on that mission and the cone and the monkey had been lost in the Atlantic Ocean after a 1,500-mile flight. The Soviets had launched their dog, Laika, into orbit on November 3, 1957, with no return planned. Mr. Johnson had claimed two important firsts for Discoverer II, that it was the first time a satellite had been positioned in flight by means of jets of compressed air so that it had a certain attitudinal orientation and that it was the first time a capsule was ejected from a satellite and sent back to earth. The capsule was said to have come down near Spitzbergen, north of Norway, and a search was underway for it. He said of Discoverer III that "biomedical data we will acquire will be very useful to the man-in-space program, Project Mercury. Seven men had been selected to train for that program, as announced April 9, to be sent into orbit and returned safely to earth. The manned moon mission prediction had come from an official of another agency, Abraham Hyatt, who told the House Space Committee on Monday that the U.S. would have that capability in 6 to 8 years. He said that a new rocket engine, capable of 1.5 million pounds of thrust, was being developed and that the tremendous engine could send a 150,000-pound satellite into orbit at an altitude of 300 miles, a 43,000-pound payload into orbit around the moon, or a 4,300-pound payload to a landing on Mars.
In Panama, it was reported that the Panamanian Government was holding British ballerina Margot Fonteyn under arrest this date in connection with charges that her husband was plotting to overthrow President Ernesto de la Guardia, Jr. The 39-year old dancer, one of the world's greatest ballerinas, was reported to be held in the private office of the commandant of Panama City's main jail. National Guard headquarters claimed that her Panamanian husband, Roberto Arias, had landed on Sunday night on Panama's Pacific Coast with about ten armed men. The National Guard, which was Panama's army and police, said that Sr. Arias and his band had been fleeing, and other reports said that he had transferred from the motor launch in which he and his wife had been cruising and then landed near his family's large cattle ranch, 75 miles west of the capital. There was no immediate official reaction from the British Embassy, which had been busy until late Monday with the visit of Prince Philip. Ms. Fonteyn for more than a decade had been the top star of Britain's Royal Ballet and was a Dame of the British Empire, the female equivalent of knighthood. She had been in Panama for several months with her husband, Panama's former Ambassador to Britain. During the weekend, the President's Government had ordered the arrest of the husband, who was the son of former President Harmodia Arias. He was charged with trying to organize an attack on a National Guard garrison located about 20 miles outside the capital.
In Detroit, it was reported that the police had said that a man who had escaped from a mental hospital had admitted this date that he had strangled a five-year old boy whose body had been found in a garage on Monday night. A homicide lieutenant of Detroit said that the confession had been obtained from the 47-year old man, who had resided intermittently with a sister residing in the same house with the boy's deaf mute parents. The accused was held for investigation of murder. Police said that they had picked him up for questioning because of circumstances of the slaying indicating that it was committed by someone who had a close knowledge of the house. Police said that he was a former patient at Galesburg, Ill., a mental hospital, and that he had broken under a barrage of questions. The detective said that the man told them that the boy was a government spy and that "spies have been chasing me all over town. There are thousands of them. I intend to get them all." He had found the boy in a bathroom which was shared by the family with other persons living in the house. He grabbed the boy, put his hand over his mouth and decided to kill him. He dragged the boy to the garage and choked him for 5 to 10 minutes, and then put the limp body on a rafter, planning to return later and find a better hiding place for the body.
In Covington, Ky., a young mother charged with murdering her two young daughters had begged doctors to let her die the previous day, following her effort at suicide, after putting a bullet through her heart, having failed. Recovering from the suicide attempt at a Cincinnati hospital, the 23-year old mother of Covington had kept pleading with physicians to let her die with her children. Police said that she had carefully shot her six-year old daughter and her five-year old daughter each through the heart as they slept at their home on Sunday night, then shot herself. The bullet, however, had missed her heart and damaged her liver, causing a large loss of blood. Aides at the hospital said that she was in fair condition late the previous night and that the weapon had been a .25-caliber revolver. Police had sworn out two murder warrants against her, but had been unable to serve them because of her injury. Investigators said that the woman apparently was despondent after losing her job as a clerk in the city assessor's office in Covington. She resigned after a suspension on March 24, police indicating that she was suspended following conviction on charges of breach of the peace and resisting arrest, the case stemming from a dispute with officers over parking her car in a city employees' lot. She had been separated from her husband of Brent, Ky., since 1956. Police said that they had raced to the home early the previous day after the woman had telephoned a newspaper reporter saying that she had killed her babies. Police said that they found a copy of her will and burial instructions for her and her children. They also found, on the bed of the two girls, a book on anatomy open to a picture with the heart area circled.
In Henderson, N.C., it was reported that nearly 100 Highway Patrolmen had pushed through lines of jeering strikers, to escort workers in and out of the Harriet-Henderson Cotton Mills this date following a new wave of violence, in the wake of the settlement of the five-month old strike the prior Friday. About 300 non-strikers, advised to bed down inside the plant overnight when angry crowds gathered outside, had departed under police protection. One female striker had yelled: "Come on out, you scabs. You were afraid to come out last night." Another screamed, "We'll get you." Three cars bearing first-shift workers had been stoned as they approached the North Henderson plant gates. One driver had jumped out of his car and hurled himself at a nearby striker. Police had quickly stopped the fight and restored order. A dynamite explosion had damaged a section of earth inside the North Henderson plant gates during the night, but there had been little damage to the buildings. Occasional rifle fire had shattered windows and splattered against plant walls late on Monday night. Police armed with riot guns, machine guns and teargas had patrolled the mill areas during the night. City officials had appealed to Governor Luther Hodges for return of the patrolmen to help restore order. The strike had appeared ended on Sunday when the Textile Workers Union of America locals had voted to ratify the contract settlement, but union officials, complaining of the status of returning workers, had declined to sign the agreement the previous day, saying that they would delay the signing until the matter was clarified. The union office said that only 30 strikers had been put on jobs as the night-shift had begun operations and that they had expected many more than that to be rehired. The strike was off but not settled, according to Boyd Payton of Charlotte, the regional director for the union. The sheriff said that the pickets "were all mighty mad because they didn't get their jobs back." For several weeks, some 150 Highway Patrolmen had been assigned to the strike scene, having been withdrawn during the weekend after the settlement had been reached. The strike had begun five months earlier when the mills had refused to continue an arbitration clause in the contract, that issue, plus job seniority rights for strikers and others, and union dues check-off provisions having become deadlocked in negotiations until the previous Friday, when the Governor had finally mediated the settlement.
In Norfolk, Va., a 19-year old
newspaper copy boy no longer faced the prospect of a jail term for
attempted bank robbery this date because the real would-be robber had
turned out to have a heart. The actual robber, a 20-year old ex-Navy
man, who was almost a double for the accused, had gone to the FBI the
previous day and admitted that that he had tried to rob the Bank of
Virginia in Norfolk the previous Friday morning. He said that his
conscience had bothered him ever since the 19-year old had been
arrested and charged with attempted robbery. The accused said that he
was glad that the other person had a conscience. The district
attorney said that the accused and the confessing individual had
looked amazingly similar physically, almost like twins. By rare
coincidence, both had been in the Bank of Virginia the previous
Friday morning. The attempted robber had stepped to the cage of a
teller and handed her a note demanding money. She thought it was a
joke and laughed, and the attempted robber then departed. The 19-year
old had been picked up just before noon, a half-block from the bank,
and was identified by the teller as the man who had handed her the
note. Pictures of both men are presented side-by-side, and the
innocent man has a cleft in his chin, whereas the actual robber does
not, but apparently, the teller had not noticed this detail. Other
than a similar hairline and haircut, they really do not appear to
look very much alike in the photos. That is why criminal defense
attorneys grill witnesses intensely on eyewitness identifications
Ann Sawyer of The News reports that there had been a little speckled bantam hen from the country which had pulled a slick trick on a bunch of first-graders at the Chantilly School in Charlotte, having been brought from Mooresville just to show them how baby chicks come into the world, but having refused to cooperate. The days had gone by and the hen had done its best, but no eggs had been produced. The youngsters waited patiently, knowing that it would take 21 days before the five laid eggs would hatch. But the previous week, things had begun to happen in the first-grade class and the little speckled hen had begun to sing right through the reading lesson. The first-graders knew things were not as they ought to be, as a laying hen sung and a clucking hen set. The next morning, there were six eggs instead of five and then there was another fresh egg and then another, but the first five had turned out to be spoiled. The hydrogen bomb could not have caused more excitement than the egg-laying bantam hen. Not disappointed in their borrowed pet, the children had written to its farmer-owner in Mooresville, with one student summing up the experience by saying: "We like the hen. She played a joke on us. We wanted her to have little babies. But the eggs were rotten. Then no eggs. So no babies." Another student used fewer words to describe the problem: "Instead of setting, she was laying."
Once, a fellow student, wethinks 'twas in the seventh grade, in science class, brought a hen to class to show, and it was quite rowdy, not appreciating the laughter from the students. That is about all we recall of it. It was exciting. The boy in question was from the country somewhere, attending school in the city, or perhaps he was an urban dweller whose father had some chickens. We never found out.
In Barrington, R.I., police staged Monday their first liquor raid since the town had gone dry 25 years earlier, seizing 410 gallons of wine and arresting a 75-year old man on a charge that he was selling it at $1.50 per gallon. The police chief said that several high school teenagers had told him that they had gained admittance to the man's cellar by using the passwords: "Elsie sent me," or just "Booze".
On the editorial page, "North Carolina Must Preserve an Ideal" finds that the saddest sound to come from Raleigh during the week was I. Beverly Lake's attack on a 91-year old constitutional requirement that the state operate a "general and uniform system" of free public schools.
Mr. Lake, whose cause was "massive resistance" to desegregation, had again yielded to the dark counsel of fear. He would delete the public school section of Article IX of the State Constitution and replace it with language empowering the Legislature to "provide for the education of the children of the state" in a manner which was not to be explained. The change was both unnecessary and unwise.
A public school system had been cherished by North Carolinians more than any other single constitutional mandate, zealously guarded for generations, and the people were not likely to offer it up as a sacrifice to the fleeting fears of a few politicians. The state was handling its racial problems with wisdom and statesmanship. Its Pupil Assignment Act allowed the local school boards the broad flexibility they needed to adjust to the requirements of Federal law. That had not resulted in sudden, mass integration as the massive resistance forces had predicted. Nor had the state endured the tragedy of Arkansas, as the public school system had remained intact thanks to the reasonableness of the people and their dedication to the principle which Mr. Lake would dilute.
The public school provision was placed in the Constitution in 1868 and it represented an ideal, followed loosely at times, but sincerely during the previous 25 years or so. Some aspects of the Pearsall Plan, the Pupil Assignment Act, which permitted a local vote to close the public schools as a last resort, threatened its high purpose, but those provisions had never been used.
It finds that there was no satisfactory substitute for a general and uniform system of free public schools, that the experiences of Arkansas and Virginia, where several schools had been closed, proved that.
In North Carolina, the public school system had served as the springboard of the state's progress and there could be no doubt about the fact among those who knew the state. The most illustrious name in the state's history was Governor Charles B. Aycock, Governor at the turn of the century, and it had been his fight for the public schools which had made it so. To abandon the public school system rather than operating it in accordance with law would do violence to a cherished ideal and offend the dignity of a great state. The State Constitution's public school provision, it finds, was a symbol of the state's interest and stake in public education and it represented a high purpose and a noble ideal, necessary to be preserved.
Mista Lake would run for gov'na the following yeya, and he had not recova'd from his social blindness, losing rather badly in the primary to Terry Sanford.
"A Memo on the Art of Tail-Bobbing" indicates that when a person bobbed a cat's tail, it was cut off close to the body, not an inch at a time, otherwise having a sore tail and a mad cat.
It suggests that the County Commission would be wise to keep that in mind as they pondered the question of whether to hold first a multi-million dollar school bond election or a vote on a countywide tax supplement for the proposed consolidated school system, or, if the law permitted, to hold both elections at the same time.
If the Commission could agree on that point, all that would remain was to determine how close to the body to slice and when.
It urges that the date should be early and that both questions were important enough to require immediate action, as the school construction needs were particularly urgent. If the two matters could not be handled in one election because of legal technicalities, the bond issue ought be submitted to the voters first. If the bonds could be authorized quickly, there was just enough time for planning and construction to have the new facilities ready by the fall of 1960. If the facilities were not ready by that time, several thousand children were going to be without a place to sit. As it was, it would be a race against time. The starting time could not be delayed until the consolidation question was concluded as it might involve cruelty to children.
It finds commendable the united front of the two school boards presented to the Commission the previous day, as they knew what was at stake, and the Commission would be wise to grant their joint request for a simultaneous vote on the two issues.
During our search yesterday for the time of airing of "Meet the Press", whether in the afternoon as we recall it occurring usually or, on this occasion with Fidel Castro, in the evening, only to find that only the radio version was aired at 6:30 the previous day in the state, perhaps because of an evening tv airtime which did not suit local programming schedules, we happened to run across this piece by later New York Times correspondent Tom Wicker, anent overcrowding in the Winston-Salem City Schools, later to be consolidated with the County system, and the consequent need for new teachers. To alleviate the crowding from the additional students, our school in the coming year would have split sessions for the first grade, meaning that half the students would attend in the morning for four hours and half in the afternoon for the same period, then switching about in the second half of the year, a contingency plan discussed previously also for Charlotte. We attended in the mornings during the first half, meaning that in the second half, we could listen to our older sibling's Kingston Trio records in the mornings or go exploring, for instance, examining at close range the digging operations across the street on the new storm drain they were installing, and otherwise sleep in, before having to report to school at around 12:30. We did not take lunch that year at school. It was very educational—good preparation for college. Necessity, as they say, is the father of invention.
"Keep a Weather Eye on the Rules" indicates that power boating legislation was just around the corner and the land-locked sailor had better keep a weather eye out for it. A safety move had come into being the previous summer with the Federal Boating Act, with its rules to apply to all states which had not enacted their own laws by April 1, 1959.
For once, however, North Carolina had been slightly ahead of the rest and a study commission had been promoted in the 1957 Legislature, approved after meetings with boat owners and others, and in 14 months, the three-man study group had discovered many things in trying to match its own recommendations with that of the Federal measure to provide equalized regulations for the entire country.
They had found that there should be mandatory registration with a fee for an operator's permit, standardized lighting for all craft moving after sundown, a life preserver for each person aboard, fire extinguishers for all power craft, and at least two people aboard when towing water skiers, one to steer and one to watch. The proposed penalties for illegal operation ranged from $50 to $500 and/or six months in jail, the latter for being drunk while operating a boat.
The commission had found that there were 73,000 outboard motors in use in the state during 1957, a figure which had probably increased to 100,000, and not only was the legislation greatly needed but also education for safety and strict enforcement of the regulations.
Publications had predicted that in the near future, boating, especially power-boating, would be the top recreational activity and that unless effective laws and learning were introduced soon, water fun would be chaotic.
"The Master Plan" indicates that a short time after a Charlotte News editorial had appeared advocating a small car from Detroit factories, Ford had knuckled under, that being the Falcon, to be released the following fall, and now Chrysler had decided to do the same thing if the public wanted it.
"In following our lead (please, we're kidding), the plans we've heard are for cars sized between the foreign bugs and our present 'low-priced' trio." It indicates that actually what they wanted were super-small machines, that it was all part of a master plan, figuring that the smaller the car, the more vehicles could be packed into a given traffic jam and the more cars, the more people to protest conditions, "and delegations do have power."
David Tillinghast, writing in the Greenville Piedmont, in a piece titled "Como Worth $25 Million?" indicates that it had noted in the papers that Perry Como had just signed a two-year contract for 25 million dollars, and he had sat in front of his television somewhat sheepishly as he had not rated Mr. Como so high as entertainment or so worthy of such a high salary. But the newspaper had expatiated at length on the future of the show and the 25 million dollars which the master of ceremonies and his hired hands were to receive for the ensuing two years, less whatever it took to provide the studio setting and other trappings for the broadcast. A million dollars per month for four or five hours of television entertainment, even with elaborate preparations, rehearsals and preliminaries, was an enormous amount of money, he finds, out of perspective.
He says he would not take anything away from Mr. Como or his ability to sell himself and would not detract from his popularity, but that if there wasn't some "haywireness" in the evaluation of his program at that amount of money for two years, there wasn't a boll weevil in South Carolina. He finds that no matter how well the production was planned and handled, the elements put together did not have the kind of work suggested by the contract.
Mr. Como's sponsors could pay him the 25 million if they wished and other sponsors of other programs could up the ante if they wished, but money itself was no guarantee of quality or value. He suggests that perhaps he ought join a class in appreciation of television and expose himself to what the maestros of one sort or another had that so constantly escaped him or what some of the entertainers who claimed to be singers, comedians or what have you possessed besides the fact that they were featured in some other event, which had to be duly plugged and re-plugged before they left the television stage.
"Tomorrow I'll try to get out of the other side of the bed."
We certainly understand the feeling, having sat through quite sleepily many such variety shows back in the late 1950's and early 1960's, at the behest of those who controlled for the moment the channel selector. Later, we tried to be absent, whenever such programming was on the air. It was very tiring. In an hour of such fare, there might be one act lasting perhaps a total of five minutes which was worth watching, but even that was fairly unusual.
About the only thing we really remember about the "Perry Como Show" was Frank Gallup's "Really", and that it was sponsored by Kraft, with some mouth-watering commercials, made so by the mellow voice of the announcer, who could make anything sound delicious, even if not fit to eat in actuality.
We even missed the "Ed
Sullivan Show" the night in February, 1964 when the Beatles
first appeared in the U.S., reliant entirely on eavesdropping on the
chatter of the young girls the following day at lunch break to find
out what they were so happy about, and figured that we might as well
tune in the next time and find out firsthand the reason for all the
buzz, less than three months after the assassination of President Kennedy—maybe
to get in good with the girls. Thus began our appreciation of the
music being put forth, beginning with the soundtrack album for "A Hard Day's Night" and developing album by album thereafter
through to "The End", which was, nevertheless, followed by
one more album which had already been in the can, unknown to the
general public at that time, since the beginning of 1969, though not
released until spring, 1970—(even if our mother, as determined years later from looking inside the piano stool, had the sheet music already for "Let It Be" in 1969 before we ever heard the song and, to our expressed doubt when it premiered via video on Ed Sullivan one March Sunday evening in 1970, said that she had been teaching the song to her third-grade students; "Oh, mother"). By then, the end had already been
forecast, and was to follow very shortly afterward. By that point, most of
the girls seemed to have lost interest. We still had, however, our 1964 Beatles wig, which fell apart actually rather quickly, it not having been well put together in Japan, though whilom we had worn it a little inside the home, but never outside, as that would have been poor taste, akin to brandishing our Bat Masterson cane outside, which we also were careful to maintain only inside per the generally accepted social norms
Drew Pearson indicates that Governor John Patterson of Alabama, who was cussing out black Congressman William Dawson of Chicago a short time earlier for probing a highway scandal in Alabama, had obtained mysterious and unanticipated help overnight from Mr. Dawson, taking the form of a telegram received by an Alabama grand jury in Mobile probing embarrassing highway charges that the Governor's former campaign manager, presently the finance director, was seeking to increase a highway land appraisal from one dollar to $180,000. Governor Patterson had made repeated statements trying to belittle the probe, even denouncing the fact that a black Congressman in Washington, Mr. Dawson being the chairman of the House Government Operations Committee, was investigating the matter. Then, suddenly, a mysterious telegram had arrived from Mr. Dawson aimed at rescuing the Governor. No one knew who had really sent the telegram, though the Congressman's name appeared as the person signing it. His secretary, however, said that it had not been cleared through her office. Furthermore, the Congressman actually in charge of the investigation, Representative John Blatnik of Minnesota, had known nothing of the telegram and said that the Committee's report was not yet typed and so Mr. Dawson had no chance to read it. Thus, the telegram was unwarranted. Furthermore, the report, just brought back from Alabama by a Committee investigator, had generally substantiated the charges made against Governor Patterson's finance director.
Despite that, the mysterious telegram signed by Mr. Dawson had reached the grand jury in the afternoon, reading: "There is not a scintilla of evidence in the land case. We washed our hands of this case on the floor of the House yesterday." Significantly, the telegram had left Washington about a half hour before its receipt but had been broadcast over a station in Mobile owned by friends of Congressman Frank Boykin of Alabama three minutes after its transmission.
Further investigation had revealed that Mr. Boykin, who had opposed Governor Patterson for election but was now doing his best to win his favor, had conferred with Mr. Dawson regarding the Mobile land scandal and had urged that no further investigation be undertaken. Members of the Committee stated that Mr. Dawson had agreed to call off the investigation at the request of Mr. Boykin on the ground that no Federal money had been lost.
Joseph Alsop, in New York City, indicates that Governor Nelson Rockefeller's experiment in governance was going through a moderately rough patch with his bold measures to permit the state to pay its way without stinting on necessary tasks, arousing some resentment among the voters. In New York City, for instance, privately conducted opinion polls indicated that if a new election were held at present, the Governor would not cut so far into the huge Democratic metropolitan majority as he had the previous November when elected.
But one of the important points about his experiment was its relatively long-range character. Doing what was unpopular but necessary in politics, such as raising New York State taxes to pay the state's bills, was something like submitting to medical treatment, whereby the medicine or the surgery might be decidedly unpleasant but reasonable persons did not expect flavorful potions and painless knives, judging instead by the end results. A major question confronting all modern conservatives was whether voters had the same good sense about the body politic as most of them had as individuals about their own bodies.
The Rockefeller phenomenon, which had attributed such interest all over the country, was an essay in modern conservatism, a test of the "progressive conservatism" which the President had once discussed, before he had finally begun to see the nation's problem exclusively through the eyes of former Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey.
In the most literal sense of the word, it was obviously unconservative to stint the nation's defenses in a time of great danger, and in the same manner, it would have been unconservative of Governor Rockefeller to stint the state's essential services instead of raising taxes. Faced with the competition of the growing states of the West, the great Eastern industrial states were in continuous danger of falling behind. But those states, like New York, also had to pay to keep up because it was equally unconservative not to raise the money to meet the bills as they came in.
That was the Governor's dilemma as he consciously saw it when he had taken office. By any sensible test, the results to date of his attack on the dilemma had been remarkably impressive. Superficially, perhaps the most impressive feature had been his smooth, patient and successful management of the initially recalcitrant Legislature. But if one looked deeper into the phenomenon, it was even more impressive because of the strong position which the Governor had achieved for the next round. The fiscal soundness of the state had been assured. According to his predecessor, Governor Averell Harriman, it had even been more than assured. Governor Rockefeller, who took from the voters at the last session of the Legislature, might be able to give something back at the next session. Regardless, with the fiscal problems solved, the Governor was now free to tackle all of the state's problems regarding transportation, education, welfare and the like. Problems such as bus taxation, middle income housing, and the communications between cities and their commuting areas had little excitement about them and yet those problems affected the everyday lives of citizens more than the character of the nation's atomic energy program. It was the sort of problem presently being studied intensively by the young lawyers and experts recruited from the universities within the Rockefeller Administration, making it seem like a miniature Republican New Deal.
All of the preparation for constructive work later suggested that the present rough patch was only a prelude to a smooth patch, and if such a patch came and was noticed by the country, and if Vice-President Nixon still seemed likely to have difficulty defeating any of the stronger Democratic candidates, Governor Rockefeller would eventually have a hard decision to make. Despite the wishful talk of some interested people in Washington, the Governor was not the sort of person to put off a hard decision in 1960 because "it ought to be easier in 1964." His willingness to run against Governor Harriman, with all the odds apparently against him, had proved his conviction that opportunities had to be seized rather than coyly awaited.
But that decision was for the future, whle at present, the Governor would not leave New York State for any political purpose. His time of decision would be the following January or February, and the hard facts of the situation by that point could then be coolly assessed, reached on the basis of those facts and only at that time, unpredictable for the present.
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain, says that henceforth he would not be without a black patch over one eye despite both of his eyes still being so strong that the oculist would not give him reading glasses. Recently, in London, after escaping from the white headhunters of Nairobi, he had detected something on his right side which was removed by surgeons, though in less time than an ordinary haircut. The resulting stitches, however, required an eyepatch.
He found that, as an attention-getter, one could not do better with neon lights for eyes. "Suddenly, amazingly, gone is the sort of suet-pudding face with the retreating hairline and the extra file of chins. Gone are the tight slightly lopped ears and in place, out comes a dapper type who gazes arrogantly around him with a faintly lifted eyebrow over his good peeper. The black patch distracts all attention from the mundane blob of fleshly surroundings, and lo! what have we here?"
He appeared as a man of mystery who might have suffered a wound, a piratical type, certainly an intriguing sort to curious "dames" one found around cocktail parties.
He goes on about it and concludes that the experience had taught him never to be without a few eye patches, that on the very afternoon he was writing the piece, he was going to wear one to the airport and if he could fox the customs and also delude the excess-baggage people into not weighing his shoulder satchels, which totaled about 40 pounds each, the black eyepatch would have passed the ultimate test. He says that it had suddenly occurred to him that he did not know why he was imparting all of that to the reader.
We don't know either.
A letter writer, Ed Cook, indicates that as a candidate for the City Council, he agreed with the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce and the Charlotte Board of Realtors that consolidation of the school systems ought be accomplished before the public was asked to vote on a bond issue for the schools. A lot of work had been done in preparing a suitable bill to be introduced to the Legislature and now that the bill had been presented and would likely pass in the near future, to rush an election for a bond issue would not be fair to the general public. He indicates that as long as educating the children was the paramount issue, adequate facilities ought be provided to give all the children an opportunity to obtain an education, not just providing a few children the opportunity of attending school in a showplace.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.