The Charlotte News
Saturday, April 25, 1959
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports from New York that police had seized a young man carrying a
homemade bomb on Friday night as he tried to climb a barrier only 200
feet from where Fidel Castro
In Poplarville, Miss., masked and
hooded men had crashed into the courthouse cell of a black man
accused of raping a white woman, clubbed the man into submission and
vanished this date into the hills of Pearl River County. The sheriff
apparently believed that the prisoner was dead
In Washington, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover ordered this date a special squad of agents into the investigation of the abduction. The agents would gather at Poplarville and "every possible lead will be expeditiously covered," according to Mr. Hoover. He said that all facilities of the FBI, including its laboratory and identification division, would be put to work on the case.
Japan had announced a five percent increase in cotton textile shipments to the U.S. during the year, and U.S. textile men had termed the increase extremely unfortunate. The Japanese voluntary quota program for the year, as predicted, called for an increase from 235 million to 247.2 million square yards of cotton cloth and made-up goods for the year. The program had been announced on Friday night. The present ceiling of 118,000,000 square yards of cloth would remain the same. But the gingham quota, including gingham stripes, would be increased from 35 million to 40 million square yards and fabrics from combed warp and filling would be increased from 26 million to 30 million square yards, those increases being offset by reductions in other types of cotton cloth. James Chapman of Inman, S.C., president of the American Cotton Manufacturers Institute, said that it "points up the need for the U.S. Government itself to determine exactly how the U.S. market is to be shared with offshore manufacturers." Henry Truslow, president of the Northern Textile Association, supported Mr. Chapman's stand in a joint statement. U.S. officials, who had taken part in the protracted five months of negotiations with Japanese Embassy officials, said that they did not anticipate that actual shipments would be greatly changed as a result of the new agreement. In some categories, it was anticipated that the shipments would be smaller. There had been no mention of a two-year agreement in the Japanese textile announcement. U.S. officials said, however, that the U.S. had told the Japanese it could not agree to any quota increases the following year unless exceptional circumstances warranted it. The Japanese agreed not to make any new demands for the 1960 quota program. U.S. textile producers, however, remained adamantly opposed to any increases of any kind.
In Henderson, N.C., it was reported that relative calm had prevailed the previous night at quitting time at the strike-torn Harriet-Henderson Cotton Mills. The worst violence had been a steady roll of rifle fire which shattered some mill windows during the night-shift, but there had been no reports of injuries. Homebound non-union workers had been greeted with catcalls and minor harassment from about 200 union members outside the mill gates. The assistant police chief said that he did not know what the reason was, but that it was "surprisingly quiet". It had been nothing like the burst of shooting earlier in the week and was not what was expected following Mills president John Cooper having announced on Friday night that he would start a third-shift the following Tuesday night. He said that he would not yield "to force and violence", rejecting the pleas of local and state officials to hold off further non-union hiring in the six-month old strike. His announcement had brought an immediate appeal from Mayor Carroll Singleton for a delay in the third shift. The Mayor said that he would enforce the riot act against any troublemakers. Police said that the statement and an anti-violence statement by the Textile Workers Union of America seemed to have a calming effect on the crowd. Governor Luther Hodges had asked Mr. Cooper to disband a second-shift put on the previous Monday night. Workers manning that shift had to run gauntlets of rifle fire and marble-throwing on glass-littered streets, though no one had been seriously injured. More than 100 State Highway Patrolmen and scores of City and County police had redoubled their efforts to stop sniping. On Friday night, the second shift had left 15 minutes early under police flares and a few shots had been fired at cars of workers, but no one was reported to have been hit. The strike had begun November 17 when Mr. Cooper and the union had failed to agree on a new contract. The primary controversy regarded a 14-year old arbitration provision in the contract. Management claimed that the provision had been abused. That issue had been mediated by the Governor a week earlier, leaving arbitration limited to matters of worker discipline. The union had ordered its thousand or so members back to work on Monday, but when only 30 of them had been given jobs, union leaders refused to sign the new contract. Mr. Cooper said that he had commitments to non-union people.
In Hazard, Ky., a fire had swept the Ashlo Coal Co. ramp this date, the scene of a clash of pickets with State police which had brought National Guardsmen into eastern Kentucky's strike-bound coal fields. By mid-morning, the ramp had almost been destroyed and coal cars on the railroad siding under the ramp were also ablaze. No estimate of damage was available. Sources familiar with operations of the company's plant for processing coal said that it was worth probably more than $100,000. About 450 United Mine Worker pickets had threatened to take over the ramp, a non-union operation, the previous day. The action had brought a call from Governor A. B. Chandler for four battalions of National Guardsmen. The 2,000 men were on the way to Perry and Letcher Counties, heart of the seven-week old UMW strike, and were expected to reach the scene this date. The Governor called the situation desperate and said that the pickets had been defiant. He said: "These fellows think they can go anywhere. State police forces are not now adequate." The latest trouble had come after a third attempt by the Governor to settle the dispute between operators and the union had ended in failure. The UMW wanted a two-dollar daily wage increase to $24.25 and a protective clause prohibiting processing of non-union coal by union operators. It said that it would accept nothing less. Operators who had refused to sign the contract said that it would bankrupt them. Nearly all of them operated small truck mines or loading ramps. The Governor said that he regretted having to call out the Guardsmen, but that lives of State police were in jeopardy and failure to act at present would result in loss of life and property. A UMW spokesman in Washington said that the union believed that the Governor "has fallen into a trap set for him by the coal operators who have created incidents of pseudo-violence designed to bring about the calling of the Guard."
In Charlotte, it was reported that a car had smashed into the side of a fire truck answering a call early in the morning, injuring two people and causing an estimated $10,000 in damage to the four vehicles involved in the crash. Police said that the driver of the car had fled the scene along with a second passenger in the car. One of the injured had minor lacerations to the face and the other had abrasions of the leg and nose, both having been released following emergency treatment at a hospital. Police charged the latter man with public intoxication. The wreck had occurred early in the morning as the fire truck was headed to a house fire and the car, going north, struck the fire truck on the right rear. A police officer said that the fire truck cost $26,000 new and that the frame had been warped by the impact, that total damage to all four vehicles would be estimated at $10,000.
Bob Slough of The News reports that the Mecklenburg County School Board had agreed to ask the County Commission to call an election on the question of consolidation of the City and County School Systems at the earliest possible date. If the commissioners approved the latest proposal, it could put the election on consolidation several weeks ahead of the election on an 8 million dollar school bond. The Charlotte Chamber of Commerce and the Board of Realtors had previously urged that the consolidation vote precede the bond issue. Both the City and County School Boards had expressed concern that there be no delay on the bond issue vote. The County attorney expressed the opinion on Thursday that it normally took about 30 days to comply with the legal requirement for holding a supplemental tax vote.
In Charlotte, it was reported that construction of a 250-bed, 6 million dollar addition to the Charlotte Memorial Hospital was scheduled to begin during the summer. The hospital administrator said that the preliminary plans and specifications for the ten-story and basement wing, plus smaller buildings for laundry and the steam plant, were now being made available to contractors for study. The project would be formally advertised for bids on about May 15, with award on the contract contemplated for late June.
In Hillsdale, Mich., a survey showed that nearly 70 percent of the alumni of Hillsdale College were active church members or leaders, belonging to 25 different denominations.
On the editorial page, "Charlotte Needs Citizens Who Care" indicates that the pre-primary warm-up in Charlotte had been the liveliest in years, but a community's political vitality was not measured in rhetoric or emotion, rather in votes. Citizens who cared about Charlotte's future would visit the polls on Monday and citizens who did not care would get what they deserved.
It reiterates its preferences for the seven-member City Council, S. Herbert Hitch, Gibson Smith, Randolph Babcock and Brevard Myers, plus the re-election of Mayor James Smith.
It urges turning out and voting in the municipal primary after studying the candidates and looking up their past records, what they stood for, and whether they had a reputation for living up to their promises. The citizen who did not vote was relinquishing a voice in local government.
"The Rear Rank of U.S. Education" indicates that the National Education Association had released a scholarly study titled "Rankings of the States", and as might be expected, the place of North Carolina was rather bad in many of the tables.
Only 20.5 percent of the state's population 25 years or older had completed at least four years of high school, ranking the state 48th in that category. Only 5 percent in the same age group had completed four or more years of college, ranking 39th. Median school years completed by those North Carolinians 25 years or older were 7.9, ranking 47th. A total of 21.1 percent of the state's people in the same age group had less than five years of school, ranking 44th. In addition, 32.4 percent of the Selective Service registrants from the state were disqualified by the mental test in 1957, including those who failed the physical also, ranking the state 44th.
On the other hand, the state ranked high in the nation in the amount of state and local aid allotted to public education, particularly when measured against the state's low per capita income. Nevertheless, it was not contributing enough and would have to pursue Federal assistance soon. Meanwhile, something would have to be done about creating the social and economic climate which would enable children to stay in public school longer and go on to college after graduation. In the latter field, there were great opportunities for the development of community colleges, such as the two presently operating in Charlotte. It was a tall order, but one in which even a little progress paid large dividends in the world of education.
"The Built-In Risks of Early Marriage" indicates that a recent survey of young people had caught its interest, showing that of 600 teenagers questioned, 77 percent favored divorce to end an unhappy marriage when there were no children, and even with children, 57 percent said that they would still divorce.
It finds it to be in part a reflection of the attitude of youngsters toward marriage and was also one reason why it believed teenage marriages were a bad risk. The survey had been a sketchy sampling, but it finds the thinking would stand up locally or nationally. It suggests that youngsters had few if any qualms about dissolving, posthaste, relationships which did not work out as planned.
It finds that to be the crux of the problem. It still thought of teenagers as children and that when they dabbled in marriage, they were children playing an adult game. Young people were still looking forward to the day when they would be accepted by society as adults. Thinking had yet to crystallize and teenagers had not lived enough years to know responsibility. In general, they had been under parental influence most of their lives and decisions had been based on parental guidance.
Not long earlier, Judge Willard Gatling had appeared as a family relations panelist. The Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court judge told his adult audience that he did not believe marriage was the institution it had once been, saying: "People are getting divorced faster than they are married. Three out of every five marriages today are ending in divorce." He did not quote a statistical source for that generalization but from his official standpoint, he made it plain that teenage marriages were a major part of his thinking.
It finds admittedly that the judge did not see much of the bright side of marriage, as already broken homes came before him. But he found that increasing numbers of cases involved teenagers.
It suggests that it had to be true that some marriages of youngsters were sanctioned to get them out from underfoot. The age of youth was a trying time for everyone involved. In other cases, both teenagers involved in a marriage felt, after long dating one another, that they were ready to be wed. Those partnerships came with two built-in strikes, as it was a rare teenager who knew where the future lay and an early marriage would hinder reaching any goal once the person was responsible for more than his or her own life. It asserts that parents had to evaluate those points in individual situations and ought be able to tell if their child was mature enough to handle the daily living which would be incurred in a marriage. Only careful guidance by informed parents could provide the proper perspective through which youth could find its way.
Shoot, you've got to watch those hemorrhaging hormones
A piece from the Mooresville Tribune, titled "Weather Signs", indicates that some of the prognostications made by the amateur weatherman seemed to be based primarily on superstition, such as the belief that a rainy Monday meant a rainy week and that a rain on the first Sunday of the month was certain to be followed by three successive "showery" Sundays. It was claimed that Friday was usually the fairest or the foulest day of the week. The time-honored rhyme: "Rain before seven, shine before eleven," still found strong believers among mountain dwellers. It was also believed that if cows laid down in their pastures and began chewing their cuds before 11:00 a.m., it foretold "a soon rain".
A clear sunset was believed to indicate fair weather for the following day, except in the case of sunsets on Tuesday, when it was claimed that it meant rain prior to Friday.
Rain falling while the sun was shining meant "the Devil is beating his wife," and also that it would rain at the same time the following day.
Mountain people, as in most other parts of the world, believed that rain on a woman's wedding day foretold an unhappy future for the bride.
There was a strange belief that rain on June 20 would cause all wild and cultivated grapes to fall off the vines.
A storm was expected when ants stopped their busy running about and retired to their "hills", when rabbits hid in protective places and when chickens went to roost earlier than usual or stood about in the yard with their tail feathers turned to the wind.
"A white Christmas means a lean graveyard" was a saying more sensible than it might sound, because cold weather killed germs and thereby reduced the spread of disease. That would be fine unless one caught pneumonia.
Drew Pearson indicates that Senate investigators had swooped down on Washington's fashionable Woodner apartment-hotel early one morning recently and had confiscated the records of all telephone calls placed through the switchboard since 1956, including those of the Catholic prelate, Francis Cardinal Spellman. Others whose private telephone records were now in the custody of the Senate Rackets Committee included counselor J. W. O'Brien of the Canadian Embassy, whose diplomatic immunity might have been violated, Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, and a half dozen Congressmen.
The raid had been led by Carmine Bellino, an investigator for the Rackets Committee, who had a subpoena signed by the Committee chairman, Senator John McClellan. The document demanded "all original records of local and long distance calls charged to the hotel telephone as well as all restaurant, valet, drugstore, and other charges made to all guests during the period from January 1, 1957." Mr. Bellino apparently had suspected that the hotel, where Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa also lived, had been burning its telephone records. The investigators barged into the switchboard room, with Mr. Bellino leading them, at 1:30 a.m. An operator started for the door, but Mr. Bellino blocked her with a restraining hand. The chief operator explained that she had only been going to the restroom and that if he wanted to go with her, he should go right ahead. Mr. Bellino then said to her angrily: "You have been burning records, isn't that so?" The woman replied that she had not. Meanwhile, the chief operator returned to the switchboard to summon the hotel's attorney, who rushed to the scene and explained to Mr. Bellino that the hotel had already started to comply with the Committee's subpoena, pointing to three boxes full of telephone call slips which, he said, the switchboard operators had been collecting. But Mr. Bellino then pulled out two slips which he claimed had been taken from the hotel incinerator, though neither call had been placed by Mr. Hoffa or his henchmen.
Mr. Bellino then began searching the switchboard room, yanking out papers from the files. After he had gone through everything, including the purses of the operators, he started to leave with the papers he had seized and instructed his men to pick up the boxes of telephone slips. But the attorney stopped them with a warning, that he was not turning anything over to them, indicating that they had entered the room without a search warrant and had gone through every file they had and so when they departed, they were not to return and ask for any more records. He said they had tried to cooperate and that the investigators had obtained all they came to get. The speech persuaded Mr. Bellino to leave the records at the hotel until the morning, ordering the attorney to keep them under lock and making him completely responsible for them. Subsequently, the papers were turned over to the Committee.
Joseph Alsop indicates that during the previous ten days the preoccupation in Washington had been with the succession of Undersecretary of State Christian Herter to become Secretary, an unnecessary preoccupation as it had been clear that he would be the successor and would do an excellent job. Meanwhile, almost no one appeared to be preoccupied with the succession at the Defense Department, given the early departure of Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy and the likelihood that Undersecretary Donald Quarles would succeed him.
He finds that the succession at the Defense Department deserved more attention than did the succession at the State Department because the correct name for Mr. Quarles was "Mr. Missile Gap". He had been a leading defense policy-maker during the previous six years when the world balance of military power had tilted dangerously against the U.S., and had great authority over the missile programs during that time. The missile gap was the worst of the nation's problems and Mr. Quarles currently opposed the measures which would likely bridge that gap. If he had gotten his way in the past, there would not be just a gap, but an inescapable abyss.
There were other problems with Mr. Quarles. When he had first entered the Defense Department as assistant secretary for research and development, the long-range missile program was in an appalling condition because of bad specifications. The development of compact, relatively light-weight hydrogen bomb warheads had not been foreseen or allowed for by the Air Force staff. Missile designs were therefore required to carry warheads of impossible weight and size. The missiles under development were either doubtfully used or impossible to use. In the first category were the Snark and Navaho projects, both of which had now been terminated. In the impossible category was the Atlas, as it was then conceived as a vast, hopelessly unwieldy missile with a takeoff weight of 450,000 pounds.
On the initiative of Air Force Assistant Secretary for research Trevor Gardner, a committee was formed to review the long-range missile program under the leadership of the late scientist John von Neumann. Without his committee's report, there would likely be no serious long-range missile program even at present. But the changes which the committee had proposed were tepidly received by the Air Force staff and actively opposed by Mr. Quarles. The insistence of Mr. Gardner, combined with the bold determination of his chief, Secretary of the Air Force Harold Talbott, were both needed to secure acceptance of the committee's report. The principal initial change was the complete redesign of the Atlas as a workable missile built around the new, much lighter weight warheads which the Atomic Energy Commission was perfecting. Somewhat later, the decision to add the Titan project also grew out of the report. Without Titan, the country would not even be in sight of having a long-range ballistic missile capable of being placed on a fully hard pad. But Mr. Quarles had opposed the initiation of the Titan project, and Secretary Talbott and Mr. Gardner had to fight to win the day.
Even the redesign of the Atlas and the order for Titan would have been fruitless, however, without the establishment in Turkey of missile-watching radars. Only the undisputed intelligence derived from those radars could have driven the Administration to spend the necessary amounts for serious development of the big missiles. Once again, however, Mr. Quarles had fought the whole plan for the missile-watching radars. The project had been smuggled through, without the concurrence of Mr. Quarles, by the Talbott-Gardner team. Thus, the country owed much to those two men, one of whom was later disgraced while the other was dismissed for his pains.
He indicates that such was the early record of Mr. Quarles in his formative period. His later record had been wholly consistent with the beginning. He finds the tragedy of the hapless Secretary McElroy's service to have been his choice of Mr. Quarles as his chief advisor. But with the missile gap growing more perilous with each month, "Mr. Missile Gap" would no doubt become Defense Secretary when Mr. McElroy resigned.
In the end, Deputy Secretary Thomas Gates would be appointed to succeed Secretary McElroy later in the year.
Doris Fleeson indicates that the degree to which all leading Democratic aspirants for the presidency were presently forcing the pace gave rise to the question of whether they could sustain it until the convention 15 months away.
Senator John F. Kennedy was the pacesetter to hold what obviously appeared to him to be an early advantage. His extensive politicking and speaking had flushed out Senator Hubert Humphrey, whose campaign was drawing its strength from liberal suspicions of Senator Kennedy's record on Senator Joseph McCarthy and the farm issue.
Between the two Senators, there had been evoked a plain statement from Senator Stuart Symington of his availability for the nomination. His travels, while less extensive, were keyed to spots where he made speeches designed to show that the former Secretary of the Air Force was far more than a military expert.
In what was accepted as his debut as a national candidate, Governor Robert Meyner of New Jersey had addressed a Democratic audience in Washington on the subject of foreign policy. He had bolstered his claims to expertise in that field with journeys to South America and Southeast Asia.
She indicates that all of those aspirants were working hard and all had started with friends and goodwill within the party, but the pitfalls were many along the way to the nomination.
In expectation of the candidacy of Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, the Texas Legislature had the wheels greased for a measure to secure Senator Johnson's re-election to the Senate in case he failed to obtain the presidential nomination. It contradicted reports that the Senator was not really a candidate.
All of the early candidates anticipated that every word and motion would be scrutinized by both friend and foe. All of them were now talking much about many subjects and it would be remarkable if none of those remarks returned to haunt them.
Senator Estes Kefauver, who never began to campaign until about six months prior to the convention, made it seem longer because he was able to cover ground very quickly.
The most obvious danger to the political travelers, as it was for Vice-President Nixon on the Republican side, was that they would have lost their freshness, now part of their appeal, by the time of the actual campaign. That could cost them heavily in the primaries of Wisconsin and Oregon, which were already becoming well-trodden places.
Conventions were often moved by emotions, fresh ideas and a fresh face. Behind the present vanguard were plenty of ambitious Democrats who were only waiting for the leaders to falter. Another hazard for the leaders was the maneuvering of their supporters. For example, Senator Symington was being blamed in Washington for the efforts of Californian Ed Pauley to obtain control of a large share of the spectator seats at the convention in Los Angeles. The story was news to Senator Symington. Mr. Pauley's claim had been based on the need for rewarding the fat cats who put up funding for the convention. But Mr. Pauley was an intimate friend of former President Truman, who was widely believed to be supporting Senator Symington as the candidate upon whom all factions in the party could agree. She indicates that whether it was true or not, Senator Symington's rivals had quickly smelled a plot to give him the advantage of galleries packed in his favor.
A letter writer favors City Councilwoman Martha Evans for the mayoralty in the city and urges voting for her.
A letter writer indicates that there were a lot of candidates for the City Council and believes that there would be a better city if voters studied them carefully. She urges not voting for people who cared nothing about honesty and clean lives.
A letter writer from Salisbury indicates that writers had taken advantage of archaeological evidence from the Greeks to recreate through imagination the life which had been lived in that ancient world. Most novels, picture magazines and movies were authentic reflections, with all of those modern devices having been used to enlighten the minds of modern men to show how the Greeks accomplished so much.
A letter writer from Winston-Salem says "phooey" on Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, indicating that the latter had been reminded recently that only a few months before the Korean War in 1950, General Eisenhower had said that defense spending ought not exceed 15 billion dollars, to which the Senator had weakly replied: "Who could foresee Korea in 1948 or in 1949?" The writer suggests that the Senator had forgotten the 1952 Republican platform which he had helped to write, which said that "with foresight the Korean War would never have happened."
A letter writer from Rock Hill, S.C., indicates that an Associated Press dispatch had quoted Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin as saying: "Politics… I eat, drink and sleep it." The writer concludes that it must be a tasty business.
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