The Charlotte News
Tuesday, April 7, 1959
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Government had readied a glowing report this date showing a sizable increase in employment and a decline in unemployment in March. Administration officials from the President on down were forecasting gratifying improvements in the job picture. From all of the advanced build-up, an increase of about half a million in employment and a drop of 250,000 to 400,000 in unemployment were indicated. That would still leave unemployment at well over 4 million. The corresponding report for February had shown employment at 62,722,000 and unemployment at 4,749,000. Secretary of Commerce Lewis Strauss said that the changes reflected in the job report would be "actually the best improvement figures between February and March in years." He also said that other Government data, some of which was still to be released, showed that the national economy was swirling along at the end of the first quarter of the year at its greatest pace in history. He said that with national income at a peak and prices remaining stable, purchasing power had never been higher and the value of all goods and services, or the gross national product, was also at a record high. He said, "The signs indicate that the current spring vigor in the economy should increase in the coming months." He predicted that the new job data would show more than a seasonal drop in unemployment and a substantial increase in employment. A drop among the idle of 300,000 would be the best March improvement since 1952, and one of 325,000, would be the best since 1950. Secretary of Labor James Mitchell had gone to the White House on Monday to brief the President personally on the good news. Afterward, White House press secretary James Hagerty said that the President had promised this date's job report would be "gratifying and of great interest to all Americans." The expected considerable springtime improvement in both employment and unemployment would take some of the starch out of an AFL-CIO jobless rally in Washington scheduled for the following day. The labor unions were bringing in more than 5,000 delegates, including union officials and idled workers, to rally for measures to stimulate job creation and provide aid to the unemployed.
In Detroit, it was reported that a Michigan Democratic monopoly appeared to be cracking this date under a stream of Republican votes from the previous day's spring election, a potential record turnout. Three Republicans led in races for 12 State offices, an unprecedented feat for Republicans since the forces of Democratic Governor G. Mennen Williams had taken full control of the state three years earlier. A continuation of the trend could provide Republicans a majority. Since 1956, the Democrats had dominated State office elections under the six-term Governor Williams. Principal contests involved 12 posts in educational fields, including two seats each on the University of Michigan Board of Regents and the State Board of Education, the governing body of Michigan State University. Michigan's voters, in the nation's first statewide election of 1959, had also chosen a State superintendent of public instruction, six members of the newly-created board of governors of Wayne State University, and a member of the State Board of Agriculture. The state's financial crisis, while having no direct bearing on the voting, had been raised as a campaign issue by both Republicans and Democrats, each blaming the other for the financial problems. Unemployment in Detroit and Wayne County had produced large voter turnout, possibly a record of 600,000. But there was a question as to how much of it stemmed from Detroit's fight over a 60 million dollar school construction bond issue, which had passed by a narrow margin, as had a 7.5 million dollar tax for school operating costs. Two Democratic-endorsed State Supreme Court Court candidates, George Edwards and John Voelker, incumbents, had been re-elected over Republican-sponsored rivals. Mr. Voelker, incidentally, had written the novel Anatomy of a Murder, which was adapted for the screen in the film of the same name, to be released the following summer, and had among its cast attorney Joseph Welch, who had become well-known in the spring of 1954 during the Army-McCarthy hearings, Mr. Welch having played the judge in the case, five years after having made the statement most identified with the hearings, in addressing Senator McCarthy after the latter had sought to smear a young staff member of Mr. Welch for having been a member of the Lawyer's Guild which the Senator suggested was a Commmmmmmunist-affiliated organization: "Have you, at long last, no sense of decency, sir?"
In Bonn, West Germany, it was reported that Chancellor Konrad Adenauer this date had agreed to run for the presidency of West Germany, a decision which meant his retirement from active politics, as the presidency was largely a ceremonial role and meant that he would not be chancellor again. The surprising decision had been announced by the president of the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, at a press conference. The latter said that the ruling Christian Democrats, who had nominated Chancellor Adenauer, had yet to discuss their choice of his successor. Chancellor Adenauer, 83, the only Government head which postwar Germany had at this juncture, presided at a meeting of a special committee set up by the party to choose a presidential candidate. The decision meant that the Chancellor would retire from active politics the following July, when the second term of President Theodor Heuss would expire. The latter was ineligible to run again. The sudden turn of events had caught West Germany by surprise. The Chancellor was serving his third term in that position and had been expected to seek a fourth.
In London, it was reported that Eleanor Roosevelt was not tireless after all. At 74, she sometimes fell asleep in company, according to her 16-year old granddaughter, Nina. There had been a general impression that Mrs. Roosevelt was chaperoning Nina on their recent trip to the Middle East, but the girl had dispelled that notion in an interview at a bookstore where the President's widow was autographing copies of her book, On My Own. Nina said: "Grandmama's absolutely marvelous. I know you think she never tires. Well, one of the reasons is that she's got the knack of falling off to sleep wherever she is, even on her feet. It can be awkward if she's in company. She did it in Iran and Egypt when people were talking shibble-de-hi that did not really interest her. I keep a very close watch. If I can catch her just as her head is nodding, one tap on the ankle is enough. But once her head reaches her chest, it takes a good old-fashioned shake. People forget that she's 74. They'd have her climbing any number of stairs or walking miles over cobblestones unless I put my foot down." Nina said that her own ambition was to get into the State Department's Foreign Service and have a diplomatic career in the Middle East, and to that end, she was studying Arabic and Hebrew. Now, see there? All you doubters of Trumpy-Dumpy-Do, and his tendency to nod off during Cabinet meetings and other unimportant functions, are really mocking only little momentary catnaps to escape all of the shibble-de-hi, a device he no doubt picked up through his obvious emulation of Mrs. Roosevelt. Like her, he exemplifies enormous empathy for the downtrodden and the underdeveloped "shit-hole" countries of the world. Shame on all of you naysayers. Trump is the greatest!!!! Always awake and on the job, 24-7. So what if he's nuts? So was King George III and look what happened to him in history's view. Need we say more?
And while about our chastisement of those who would mistreat the inscrutable Trumpy-Dumpies, we instruct the mainstream meteors to lay off that FEMA teleportee. There are documented
In Fayetteville, N.C., a desperate escaped prisoner charged with slaying a bank teller, had been killed and his companion captured during a blazing gun battle with police at a roadblock the previous night. Officers said that the 29-year old man who sat wounded and bleeding in his getaway car after the gun battle might have committed suicide as a captain of the Highway Patrol had grappled with him for his pistol. The gun had discharged and the bullet had hit the man in the neck. Already severely wounded, the final wound apparently had caused his death. He was charged with the slaying of a bank teller during a holdup on February 20. He and an 18-year old male of Fayetteville, charged with car theft, had escaped from the Cumberland County jail early on Saturday after tricking a jailer into opening their cell.
Bill Shaw of the Fayetteville Observer provides an additional report on the capture of the 18-year old and the killing of the other escapee.
John Kilgo of The News reports that the captain of detectives in Charlotte had stated that a "roving madman" with an intense desire to kill might be on the loose in the city. The officer said that the man who had beaten and stabbed a 64-year old man to death in his small grocery store on Beatty's Ford Road the previous day probably had operated in the city before. Police were working on the theory that the killer was the same person who had savagely beaten a 19-year old service station attendant in the head on March 16. In that case, the service station attendant had been beaten and robbed of $24 while he was attending the Spur service station on Independence Boulevard. He remained in the hospital in critical condition for several days. The detectives said that the general description of the man who had beaten the service station attendant and the one seen running from the store the previous morning were similar, and they believed that the man either knew the store attendant or had gone there with the intention of killing him. The detective said it was one of the most brutal killings he had ever seen and that the killer appeared to be a roving madman. He said that the person who had killed the man in the store operated similarly to the man who killed the service station attendant, leading them to believe that it was the same person. The store operator had been stabbed 12 times around the heart, ten times over other parts of the body and had been beaten in the head about 16 times with a broken soft drink bottle. Police had picked up several suspects since the previous day for questioning, but had run up against a stone wall. Officers had found a pocket knife lying near a pool of blood on the floor inside the store where the killing had taken place. Two young boys who had found the dead man the previous day told police that the only thing the grocer had said to them was, "Oh, Lord, help me."
In Tokyo, it was reported that wedding fever had gripped the Japanese capital this date. In the morning, a young man wearing bathing trunks, lensless horned-rimmed glasses, a placard and Chinese characters covering his chest and back, had stepped from a taxi in front of the Imperial Palace and calmly dove into the moat around it. Clutching the placard, he had swum along the moat for about 200 yards and climbed out into the waiting arms of a police officer. The placard read: "Congratulations Crown Prince Wedding." The sense of the India-ink writing on his front and back was "Congratulations Crown Prince and Michiko". The man said that he had been a sandwich-board carrier for ten years in the neighborhood around the palace and wanted to congratulate the Crown Prince and Ms. Shoda, thinking it was the best way. Police were expected to let him go with a mild reprimand, as his action typified the rising excitement over the wedding scheduled for Friday between 25-year old Crown Prince Akihito and Michiko Shoda. White, red and blue bunting was strung across the roads, gay lanterns were placed over the streetlights, cherry blossoms were around the Imperial Palace grounds, shrines, in backyard gardens and all along the streets, bringing spring glory to the dingy city. Countless windows displayed photographs of the Crown Prince with his Samurai features stern and dignified, and Ms. Shoda, with a wistful half-smile on her lips.
The Charlotte Observer
reports the winners of the 37th annual Academy Awards
On the editorial page, "Charlotte's Heart Develops a Murmur after 200 Years of Pulsating Progress" finds the plight of midtown Charlotte in 1959 to be fading and that unless major steps were taken soon, its commerce core would be in danger of strangling in its own traffic congestion.
Within a week, two important prescriptions had been written, one being the decision to begin purchasing rights-of-way for the widening of Fifth Street, and the other being the approval by City Manager Henry Yancey of plans to ban parking on 27 blocks of Independence Boulevard. The first move would provide the city with a new crosstown traffic artery and the second would make Independence a six-lane thoroughfare at all times.
It finds neither of the actions a cure to the traffic woes, but rather only palliatives. The bold steps needed to unbottle Charlotte were still in the planning phase.
Yet the downtown area still had life, was still the central marketplace, the merchandising magnet for the great, growing region, where wealth was concentrated, providing the primary tax base for the City and County Governments. It could still be restored to the vigor of its youth, but would have to undergo rigorous treatment which would be costly.
The present situation was true of many other growing cities around the country, caused by the dominance of the automobile over modern urban life. The automobile had made it possible for people to come from long distances to shop in Charlotte's central business district, but, through the years, had become a Frankenstein's monster as well because it got in its own way and made it difficult to enter or exit the city, especially during rush hour traffic in the mornings and evenings. At those times, the city became a snarl of bumper-to-bumper congestion, causing tax values to decline as exhaust from idling vehicles built up.
It indicates that what was needed was a master plan of modern thoroughfares to unbottle the congestion in the most scientific, thorough, imaginative and economical way. The traffic engineers were studying such plans at present after much research had been done by private consultants. The city already knew where people went in Charlotte, why they went there and the routes they presently took, the problem being to get them there faster and easier.
The problem required a comprehensive solution, not done by piecemeal. There had to be provision for parking facilities which were convenient, reasonably priced, attractive in appearance, not wasteful of land capable of higher economic usage, shaped to fit the needs of different neighborhoods and for both short-term and all-day parkers. That was the challenge which had to be met head-on by the city for it to remain sound, dynamic and full of promise.
Charlotte had an excellent traffic engineer in Herman Hoose and the entire metropolitan community had a superb City-County Planning Department under William McIntyre. The only question was how those assets, including the vitality of the people, could be used, and how swiftly.
"New York City's Threat Heard
Again" indicates that in 1861, Mayor Fernando Wood of New York
City had tried to make the city an independent state
Tired of trying to get things out of Albany, the New York city minority had called for a constitutional amendment to create South New York and North New York. South New York would be New York City. The amendment had been received with laughter in Albany and by voice vote, everyone had a good time applauding it. In committee, it stood "all the chance of 'Gunsmoke' using George Gobel as a new hero."
Metropolitan New Yorkers were upset, resembling a flock of penguins whose eggs had been stolen.
The New York situation, it finds, was reflected across the country. Many believed that Charlotte and the Piedmont cities had been short-changed by the Legislature in failing to reapportion representation since the 1950 census.
It indicates that for the present, it planned to keep an eye on New York, both the city and the state, and if the former could evolve a plan to improve its lot, it could act as a model for all urban communities, finding that Raleigh would do well to have a care.
"Life in America" quotes from the New York Times: "The Township Committee of Milburg has passed an ordinance to control the design of new architecture and remodeling in this West Essex community… The ordinance empowers the building inspector to turn down applications because of 'excessive similarity' or 'excessive dissimilarity' to any existing or planned structure."
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "Reprieve for Uncle Sam, Gent." indicates that if Uncle Sam read what Allan Nevins had written about him in the New York Times Magazine, he would jump off the Eads Bridge. And Mr. Nevins would only say that he should have disappeared long earlier. He believed that Uncle Sam was "a grotesque falsification" of the accomplishments and ideals of 175 million Americans. He found the image archaic, cute, scheming, devoid of any trace of the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural of Abraham Lincoln.
It questions, however, what, if Uncle Sam were abandoned, would take its place. Mr. Nevins favored a goddess, Columbia, but it questions whether a kinswoman of Athena in a Greek nightgown was acceptable in an unclassic pajama age. It had been considering other possible successors, such as Huckleberry Finn, a good all-around American, or Paul Bunyan, a mighty man. But neither would do as a representative of the men on the Detroit assembly lines. A soldier in an Eisenhower jacket could go out of style. An atomic scientist with a slide-rule or a man in a gray flannel suit, perhaps watching television, were too specialized, while Congress still paid attention to farmers. A movie queen or a beauty contest winner were other possibilities.
It finds the problem a difficult one and so it hopes that Mr. Nevins would offer Uncle Sam a suspended sentence, which would give the cartoonists a chance to try to endow him with the courage and fortitude of the country's heroes, the sublimity of the poets, the resourcefulness of the scientists and the common decency of all 175 million Americans.
Drew Pearson indicates that the President was still telling friends about some of the side-splitting stories with which President Sean O'Kelly of Ireland had regaled him in the White House. One was: "England's mountain climbers were getting all the national headlines, so two stalwart Irishmen decided that for the good of the name of their country they must out-do the English. So they set out in midwinter to climb the highest peak despite warnings from the Swiss. The Swiss were right, the snows were too deep. And after hours of climbing, the two Irishmen found themselves floundering in snow up to their armpits, unable to move, getting colder, numb and weak. They thought the end was near. Suddenly, one Irishman pulled his arm out of the snow and pointed toward the horizon. He said 'Look!' Across the snow toward them came a large St. Bernard dog, bell around his neck ringing, and on his chest the familiar keg of liquor. 'Hurrah!' cried the first Irishman. 'We are saved! Here comes man's best friend.' And the second Irishman added, 'And imagine! A dog, too!'"
Behind the President's firm refusal to liberalize the unemployment aid program had been the quiet lobbying of big business representative Stanley Rector who operated adroitly through the back door of the White House. His inside contact man was the President's chief counsel, Gerald Morgan, whose former law firm had helped Mr. Rector fight Federal unemployment insurance. Now, Mr. Morgan was carrying on the same fight from the vantage point of the President's elbow. Mr. Rector worked out of a three-room suite in the Washington Hotel, just around the block from the White House. The prior year, he had spent over $100,000 lobbying against jobless benefits. His board of directors included executives from U.S. Steel, General Motors, Chrysler, Goodyear Tire and Rubber, Socony Mobil Oil, and Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Co. Over 500 companies contributed between $200 and $2,500 apiece to Mr. Rector's operation. In 1947, Mr. Rector had hired Mr. Morgan's law firm, Morgan and Calhoun, as registered lobbyists. After Mr. Morgan had entered the White House, he had served as advisor to the President on unemployment compensation. The previous month, Mr. Morgan had helped to persuade the President to reject liberal recommendations of Secretary of Labor Mitchell.
Walter Lippmann, in the second of a series of reports on Berlin based on his recent visit to Europe, indicates that the fact that German reunification was not possible in the foreseeable future, as he had detailed the previous day, was the hub from which all the spokes on a wheel radiated all of the current German problems, including the future of Berlin. Understanding that historical fact, he posits, was essential to the formation of a workable allied policy.
Until the previous November, when the Soviet Union had precipitated the present Berlin crisis, it had been the official assumption on both sides of the Iron Curtain that Germany would eventually be reunited with Berlin as its capital. As late as the summit conference in Geneva in July, 1955, the Russians had still been endorsing the idea of German reunification, and it had only been since the previous November that Russia had openly and explicitly announced that its policy was to have two German states.
He indicates that it would underestimate the weight and impact of the Russian action to treat it as a mere example of Nikita Khrushchev's impulsiveness or as a case of bluff. Nor was it correct to regard it as the main reason for the Russian action, or such accidental and subsidiary factors as the contrast between the brightness of West Berlin and the drabness of East Berlin, or the embarrassment of the refuge movement to the West, or even the irritation caused by Western propaganda and subversive agencies operating from West Berlin. The Soviet Union had lived for years with those things and could go on living with them.
East Berlin was primarily a working-class district and the standard of living had always been notably more drab than in West Berlin, which always had a large middle class and many rich people. Moreover, the Russians, having drained East Germany for reparations in the years immediately following World War II, had fairly recently reversed the process and were making large investments, estimated by U.S. economists as having reached a total of 400 million dollars. The rate of industrial growth in East Germany was believed presently to be about ten percent per annum and there were confident U.S. observers who said that the standard of living of workers and farmers was no longer radically far apart in the two Germanys. He indicates that neither should the flow of refugees be regarded as a major element in the Soviet initiative of the prior November. Traffic between the two parts of Berlin was quite free. If the Soviets thought it important, they could reduce the migration from Communist East Germany to democratic West Germany, even if they could not wholly stop it.
He indicates that he was dwelling on those points because he was persuaded that if the U.S. overemphasized the nuisance value of West Berlin, it would miss the chief significance of the Soviet policy. By seizing the initiative and making the indefinite perpetuation of a divided Germany the basis of their policy, the Russians had a chance to accomplish two major objectives, one being to stabilize the East German state and the satellite orbit by extinguishing the hope of adherence to the West, and the other being to confound and confuse West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's state by a spectacular demonstration that his policy was at a dead-end and had led to the partition of the German Reich. The two-Germanys policy which the Russians had adopted rested finally on their military power, as they could not be forced out of East Germany at any calculable military price.
But, he suggests, the U.S. would be deceiving itself if it thought that the division of Germany rested only on bare force thwarting the will of Europe and the Western world. He finds that for a variety of reasons, the prolonged division of Germany had very wide support all over Europe, both East and West, and also within Germany itself. It had not merely been that Hitler's war was still a living memory in Europe and that the fear of a rearmed and reunited Germany existed in London, Paris and even Bonn, as well as in Warsaw and Moscow. But in the 14 years since World War II had ended and the occupation by the allies of Berlin had begun and the Nazi Government had been abolished, the two Germanys had grown apart. The Soviet Union on its side, the Western allies on their side, had developed a powerful interest in maintaining the division of Germany.
There was reason to believe that Mr. Khrushchev's action the prior November had its origins in the uprising in East Germany, in Poland and Hungary. They occurred after the summit meeting at Geneva in July, 1955, when the Soviets were still speaking of reunification. Almost surely the uprisings had convinced the Kremlin that unless they held tightly to East Germany, the whole satellite orbit would liquidate itself.
Parallel with that development in the East, there had been developments in the West which pointed to the same end, the continuing division of Germany. One of those was the movement "to make Europe", which meant the movement to integrate economically and eventually politically the West Germans within Western Europe. That movement had great economic vitality on the Continent. There was reason to think that on the political side it was for many in the younger generation the one most attractive ideal which had been offered to them. But in the West European Community there was no comfortable place for the East German state, which would be left-wing if not Communist. He finds it no accident, but quite logical, that the leaders of the European movement were not enthusiastic for German reunification, in their hearts being quite opposed to it.
There was also NATO, with its strategic structure resting on the deployment of the allied armies in West Germany and on their reinforcement by a West German Army. The military structure could not be preserved in any conceivable form in a reunited Germany. Since all the Western allies regarded NATO as indispensable to their own security, they had opposed any German settlement which would dismantle the military structure in West Germany.
He indicates that beneath the official surface, Mr. Khrushchev's policy of two Germanys had great resonance in Western Europe. It was in that context of general consensus that reunification was not now practical politics, that Berlin had become a new and special problem requiring a new and special solution, which he believes was possible to reach.
Robert C. Ruark, in London, indicates that he had only been there a few days and was already beginning to shake from the hustle and bustle and noise. After three months in the African bush he found himself scared of the people, the noise and the traffic, and especially the newspapers. Everything frightened him, including the prices and the head waiters and doormen. But mostly it was the people, the noise and the news.
He offers some alarming headlines from the European edition of the New York Herald Tribune, finding them to have given him combat fatigue.
He says that in the streets of London, no man was safe from either the prowling male or the carnivorous female, the male and female prostitutes hunting in packs like wild dogs, eventually hoping to pull down their victims from sheer fatigue. He had never seen so many street women in any city of the world and the young men with peculiar haircuts had driven the tarts off their old preserves in Piccadilly. A woman of virtue could not shop along some London streets without being attacked, verbally and sometimes physically, by the professional women, who accused the innocent housewives of invading their terrain.
He says that he believes he was in the wrong jungle and had better head back to the me-Tarzan, you-Jane belt, that compared with London, Africa seemed awfully tame.
A letter writer from Salisbury finds good advice to be "look up, laugh, love and lift", the best way to live. But it had to be learned and the habits had to be cultivated. As with liberty, it had to be practiced and won by each new generation. He indicates that it could not be passed to the children, that it was a way of life which had to be earned and fought for to be kept after it had become an established habit. "But do not despair, for there is always a new day coming up and we can correct old mistakes."
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