The Charlotte News
Friday, May 1, 1959
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Clare Boothe Luce had quit this date as Ambassador to Brazil because of her public row with Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon. The President regretfully announced her decision after an hour-long talk with her at the White House. In a letter to the President, she had said: "It is no longer possible for me to accomplish the mission which you have entrusted to me." White House press secretary James Hagerty told a press conference that the President had sought to persuade Mrs. Luce to reconsider her decision but that her letter had given the reasons why she felt she could not reconsider. She stood beside Mr. Hagerty as he announced the decision and refused to make any comment on her decision other than that set out in the letter. The letter said that the "climate of good will was poisoned by thousands of words of extraordinarily ugly charges against my person, and of distrust of the mission I was to undertake." She did not mention Senator Morse by name but noted that "the American author of these charges" is also chairman of a Senate subcommittee which handled Latin American affairs. Senator Morse tried to block confirmation of her appointment but had been defeated by a 79 to 11 vote in her favor on Tuesday. A few hours afterward, Mrs. Luce had caused an angry uproar by saying in New York that her troubles had begun when Senator Morse had been "kicked in the head by a horse" in 1951. The Senator had called her remark proof that she was not fit for the diplomatic post and implied that she was unstable mentally. In summing up her decision to step aside, she told the President in the letter: "Common sense indicates that the good will and support which the rest of the Senate has given will not be forthcoming from the subcommittee chairman. A continuing harassment of my mission, with a view to making his own charges stick, is the natural course the chairman would follow. And the sad fact is not that I, but Brazilian-American policy would be the victim. Therefore it seems indisputable that at this time of grave economic difficulties in Brazil, the best interests of that country, as well as of the United States, will be served by your selection of another plenipotentiary. Again, I regret with all my heart that I will not have the opportunity to be of this service to you, to our country and to inter-American relations." She declined to say what her future plans would be.
In London, it was reported that Field Marshal Viscount Bernard Montgomery had come home from Moscow this date and apologized for saying that U.S. leadership was slipping. It had almost been his first act after stepping from the plane which had returned him from two meetings with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. He said, "If I have caused offense to any of my friends on the other side of the Atlantic, I would like to apologize unreservedly and sincerely to them." His original remarks had been made in a television interview released as he had taken off for Moscow. President Eisenhower had shown his disapproval at a press conference during the week by referring approvingly to sharp British criticism of the Viscount's statement. The latter had repeated his apology three times at an airport press conference. Britain's best-known wartime soldier looked grim as he expressed the apology. He was asked if he really meant it when he said in a television program with Edward R. Murrow that he would shoot an American himself if necessary to ensure that American blood was spilled on the first day of any future war. He said that it was just a joke, smiling a little nervously at 50 newsmen and photographers. He said that Mr. Murrow had come down to spend three days at his Hampshire home and they had spent two days filming, that in all, they had eight hours of film, which he understood was cut down to an hour-long program. He said he did not know what bits had been used and wanted to see the program very quickly. He said that nobody had discussed with him the remarks regarding American leadership. He said he heard a rumor in Moscow, but the first he had heard about it in detail had been upon his arrival back in London this date. He refused to discuss what had gone on between him and Mr. Khrushchev, indicating that it was his own private business. He said that he had not discussed the issue of a summit conference with the Soviet leader. He said he had gone to Moscow as a soldier and had talked as a soldier. When an interviewer commented that Mr. Khrushchev was a politician, Viscount Montgomery said that he was a general.
In Moscow, it was reported that Russia had told the world this date not to use force to interfere with Communist progress. It kept concealed the weapons with which it threatened to counterattack. Keynoting the annual May Day festival in Red Square, Soviet Defense Minister Marshal Rodion Malinovsky charged that "provocative statements by American military leaders call for the use of force against the Soviet Union. Our military forces are true to the motherhood and vigilantly on guard all over the country. They are ready to give a destructive rebuff to any who try to obstruct the productive work of the Socialist Soviet Union." Russia claimed that it had plenty of weapons to carry out a destructive counterattack, but unlike the previous year, none of the big rockets had been paraded through Red Square. Except for a few light rockets, evidently anti-aircraft, not much military hardware was exhibited which could not have been largely duplicated from the previous war. Moscow radio, however, had said that artillery exhibited included "anti-aircraft equipment as big as factories and twin-barreled self-propelled guns capable of hitting anything on earth or in the skies." Mr. Malinovsky, in an order of the day, said that the Soviet Government and the Communist Party were fighting interminably to ease international tensions but that they "constantly meet opposition from ruling circles of the Western powers who wish to continue the armaments race. Under these conditions, the Communist Party and the Soviet Government can only take measures strengthening the military capacity of the motherland and fighting skills and techniques and show a militant readiness and vigilance." His speech had also attacked the U.S. treaties with Iran, Turkey and Pakistan, the rearming of West Germany, and the location of nuclear bases around the Soviet Union. On the reviewing stand with him were Soviet leaders, headed by Premier Khrushchev and First Deputy A. I. Mikoyan, both of whom waved jauntily to the cheering throngs jamming the square. The march of military personnel, 100 abreast, lasted for about 20 minutes, just twice as long as that of the previous year. Then had come the armor, led by light reconnaissance vehicles carrying half a dozen riflemen. Larger armored cars followed and then banks of rocket launchers resembling what had been called the Molotov Piano. Following those were light cars, similar to jeeps, carrying paratroopers. Light tanks and heavy tanks came next, the latter carrying four-inch guns. The artillery had been handsome, including some anti-aircraft guns which seemed to have a bore of nearly 6 inches in diameter, equipped with a fitting on the end of the barrel designed to reduce the recoil of the big tube on firing. But all of that had been shown before.
Stringent rationing of FHA home mortgage insurance within a month was foreseen this date unless the Congressional housing deadlock was broken soon. Informed Congressional sources predicted that the FHA would have to halt action on all new applications by June 1 if new insurance authorization was not voted by that point. Congress had set a ceiling on the total value of housing mortgages which could be insured by the FHA. That ceiling would be raised 6 billion dollars immediately and another 4 billion dollars on July 1 under a pending omnibus housing bill. But that measure was blocked in the House Rules Committee. Only about a billion dollars of insurance authorization remained. But FHA, beginning the previous fall, had begun issuing "agreements to insure" in lieu of actual insurance in an effort to conserve its dwindling authorization. At present, about 3.5 billion dollars worth of those agreements had been issued. They were actually quasi-commitments to issue insurance when the depleted insurance authority was finally extended by Congress. Congressional sources said that FHA might have to begin rationing mortgage insurance within a week, or 30 days at most, to limit it to housing projects presently underway. Such action would halt new construction insurance commitments at the height of the spring building season. Lenders were presently making mortgage loans on FHA "agreements", but those loans could dry up in the face of a continued Congressional deadlock. Two Southern Democrats and the four Rules Committee members who were Republicans had thus far refused to vote to let the housing bill reach the floor, tied up by a 6 to 6 tie vote in the Committee, with no immediate resolution in sight. There was no controversy regarding increasing FHA's insurance program, which was self-supporting, but there was a sharp disagreement regarding other sections of the bill, which would authorize an estimated 2.1 billion dollars of spending for public housing, slum clearance, and other Government-aided housing programs, that figure far exceeding that which had been requested by the President.
In New York, it was reported that radio and TV personality Arthur Godfrey had been told this date that the tumor removed from his chest the previous day had been cancerous. He made no special comment on that news and seemed in good spirits, according to a hospital announcement. A mid-morning report from the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center had said that he was taken from the recovery room to his room in the Harkness Pavilion early during the morning and that his doctors had stated that his condition was "entirely satisfactory and that he has been doing fine in post-operative recovery." The hospital planned to issue reports twice daily on his condition. Generalized figures on lung cancer from the American Cancer Society placed him under 25 to 1 odds against complete recovery. The Society considered a lung cancer victim as "surviving or saved" if he remained alive five years after treatment. Under the best circumstances, including prompt surgery, the Society said that the survival rate was 34 percent. Mr. Godfrey, 55, would survive and live until 1983.
In New York, it was reported that New Yorkers had been plagued on Thursday night not only with fog but with a high degree of soot in the air which had caused irritated eyes and sooty faces. The Weather Bureau said that it had no ready explanation for the soot, but some weather observers had described the condition as being the result of a dense layer of air hanging over the city entrapping industrial wastes.
In Canton, N.C., it was reported that Governor Luther Hodges had taken a respite from the "politically charged" atmosphere of Raleigh this date and gone to the mountains to dedicate a new paper-making machine. In his prepared address, he expressed relief at being able to rest from his torrid pace which had included watching over his legislative program and attempting to settle Henderson's cotton mill strike. He said that it was a good day to get away from Raleigh and its politically charged atmosphere, and was good to be in a plant which paid among the highest wages in the county and not have to listen to discussions as to whether 75 cents per hour was too much of a wage for the people, referring to the proposed State minimum wage bill. He said it was good to be where there was industrial peace instead of dissension, where management fulfilled its corporate, community and public relationships and where a company recognized its obligations to deal fairly and openly with everyone. He spoke at the commissioning ceremonies of the Champion Paper & Fiber Co.'s new machine which added 200 to 300 tons of paper per day to the mill's production capacity. How much it was contributing to the unpleasant, sulphurous odor pervading Canton is not indicated.
J. A. Daly of The News reports that H. D. Horton, 70, nationally known in the motor trucking industry, had died in Charlotte this date after a period of declining health. He had maintained his residence in Charlotte since 1913, though in 1941 had been named chairman of the board of Associated Transport, Inc., of New York, when that organization was formed through the merger of seven companies including Horton Motor Lines of Charlotte. He had been active in Charlotte civic, religious and Masonic affairs. During World War II, he had been an adviser to several Federal agencies in Washington. After graduating from schools in Americus, Ga., where he had grown up, he had taken business courses in Atlanta before moving to Charlotte in 1913 and establishing a small tire vulcanizing and retreading business. In 1917, that business had expanded into trucking.
In Greensboro, it was reported that the Atlantic Coast Conference this date had voted to suspend regional football and basketball telecasts for the coming school year. The one-year suspension, approved by member schools at the ACC spring meeting, had been prompted by a growing concern over the attendance drop at events televised during the two years of the regional television programs. Conference officials called for further study of the program's future after the suspension. A ceiling of 140 full or partial scholarships in football and basketball had been established for the start of the 1960-61 school year. Clemson's proposal to revise the football bowl receipts division formula was defeated 5 to 3 by the member institutions. Under the proposal, a school would have been allowed to retain $60,000 or half of its bowl receipts, whichever was greater. Conference representatives voted to retain the present rule which had the competing school keeping half its receipts and providing the remainder to the conference and other members without specifying a guaranteed amount. Some officials felt that under the Clemson plan, member schools would look more favorably on participation in the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Fla., a game which paid about $85,000 to each of the competing schools. The receipts division presently in effect would impose considerable financial strain on any school accepting that bid. The basketball coaches' proposal to allow a conference team to participate in the National Invitation Tournament in New York had been tabled for action at the December meeting. New information on the matter had been received by the conference and further study was deemed necessary.
In Winston-Salem, it was reported from Wake Forest College during the week that the vote count for student body vice-president and secretary had exceeded the number of students registered, and in consequence, the elections committee called for another ballot the following week.
To the morons of Magaville who always and invariably claim "election fraud" whenever their candidate loses, undoubtedly taking their cue from "Citizen Kane", when you encounter such a scenario, let us know. Now, these Magamorons are yelling "election fraud" in California simply because the votes are taking the usual several days to tabulate, exacerbated on this occasion because of there having been a crowded gubernatorial ballot with 62 candidates and considerable talk in advance of the election by Republicans, eager to scheme their way into state office by congregating their votes between the two Maga-demog Republicans on the ballot so that they might wind up as the only two candidates remaining for the general election, even though both together would poll inevitably far less than anything close to a majority, thus causing Democrats, to avoid such a scenario, to withhold their mail-in and drop-off ballots until the last few days before mailing them in or dropping them off, to determine which Democrat appeared most likely from the polls to come out on top in the heavily Democratic state, thus prohibiting the all-Maga general election between two demagogic morons. We remind that there has not been a Republican elected to any major state office in California since 2006, 20 years ago. Wake up, you stupid Magawumps. California is not going your way, seeking to elevate idiots, reality tv stars and British podcasters who have no knowledge of statecraft or politics, and would be incapable, in any event, of working with an overwhelmingly Democratic State Legislature to effect any significant change. Any such person who would seek to emulate His Highness would find the going rather tough in California, where there are adequate majorities in the Legislature to impeach that person forthwith if he tried any such shenanigans, violating the State Constitution as His Highness daily violates our Federal Constitution. It takes time to verify signatures on the envelopes of mail-in and drop-off ballots to assure against fraud. It might be noted that on the same day the ballot is received, the Secretary of State of California, in charge of elections, promptly notifies by email each voter that their ballot has been received and counted, a double check against potential fraud. No Maganut has yet come up with any possible scenario under which a single vote could be or has been cast fraudulently. (Claims that there has been illegal vote-harvesting are hinged only to a single instance of paying for votes, an illegal practice, and not the practice itself of third-party collection and mailing or dropping off of sealed ballots, which is legal in numerous states, including the Magastates of Sou'' Ca''lina, Lou'sianar, Flo'ida (where elections, as we know, are always as clean as a hound's tooth, favoring Democrats), Montanar, the Dakotars, and others.) The notion that there is no voter identification required in California is patently false, as a valid driver's license or photo identification is required for voter registration. Republicans on the far right naturally object to the idea of every registered voter being afforded the facility to vote through the mail or by dropping off their ballot at several designated locations within walking distance of most people's residence on or before election day so that the elderly and infirm and the extremely busy do not have to stand in line for hours in the hot sun as in the Neanderthal states of the South. God forbid that we would have a high turnout rate, as that would always be bad news for Republican candidates anywhere in the country, save perhaps in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana. Let us make it as hard as we can for Democrats to vote, and then accuse Democrats of cheating and trying to steal the election when they do vote in high numbers. That's the ticket! Trumpy-Dumpy-Do is always right! And those who say otherwise are traitors to our great democracy and should be summarily shot by executive order of El Presidente! Everybody votes for El Presidente or else!
And here is a riddle for this Friday night's tv fare: What insures that bridges
On the editorial page, "Lest Tar Heels Forget the Doldrums" indicates that Time Magazine had alternately patted or rebuffed Southern states as if they were mischievous urchins, but during the current week, had put aside condescension to give North Carolina a grade "A" with a two-page spread titled "North Carolina: The South's New Leader". It had complimented Governor Luther Hodges and the economic burgeoning which had taken place under his leadership, in a fair and generous treatment unmarred by the racy quest for mere cleverness which sometimes peppered the magazine's pages with "twaddle".
It had found that signs of progress had picked up under Governor Hodges, including the ground-breaking for new colleges, record-shattering vaults in industrial development and investment, experiments like the Research Triangle around Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, and the striving to comply tolerably with the educational order decreed by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Time finally had acknowledged the passing of the mantle to North Carolina of Southern "leadership that Virginia wore so long, so proudly", a transition which had been obvious to all except Virginians for some time.
It finds it to be heady stuff for the "vale of humility", the kind of celebration which North Carolinians had not often savored and had sometimes even sought to avoid, perhaps it being better that they study the sources of the new notoriety rather than revel in the moment.
Time had said that the sources were the reluctance to "live under a spell", the educational fervor of turn-of-the-century Governor Charles B. Aycock, Chapel Hill, and the "financial oligarchy" of business leaders who made the state's polity a "progressive plutocracy". It finds that something needed to be added in the new day of "Southern leadership", at least as a footnote to that which Time had indicated. It was true that Governor Hodges and his allies of the new order deserved every plaudit they received, but in all fairness, the emergence from the vale of humility had not been a feat of legerdemain accomplished in a few months or even a few years. North Carolina could accurately claim that it was now reaping the bounty of a long period of soul-searching which went back to the early decades of the century. The seeds had been sown in more frustrating times, as when Walter Hines Page had exiled himself with the bitter lament that North Carolina had in several decades squandered enough brains and character to govern the civilized globe. Or when Thomas Wolfe, more than an artist, had brooded from afar on the state's provincialism. There had been times when the University, cited by Time, had been untouched by Frank Porter Graham and his successors, when Dr. Benjamin Swalin's North Carolina Symphony Orchestra, also mentioned, would have been thought an idle dream, and when Professor Howard Odum of UNC and his ventures into objective analysis of race consciousness and tenant-farming would have probably gotten him lynched. "In the era of this elusive mood, North Carolina was probably most a vale of humility, reluctant to take up the precocious arrogance of her more stylish neighbors, yet woefully ill-equipped to assert herself economically. Yet, oddly enough, to these hopeless doldrums can be traced the discontent which prepared North Carolina's slow journey to the renaissance of 1959."
The state had been drawn last into the Civil War, a conflict which had cost the state the most of any member of the Confederacy in casualties and had left it with least. From that point, an unconditional brotherhood with a region sulking in ruins was unattractive. Finding uncensored education, self-scrutiny and realism preferable, it was less hostile to pressing industrialization and the claims of the city, those forces having become the road to progress.
It finds that it would be tragic if in days of plenty, the state forgot the lesson of the dead, boring days when it had nothing and its inhabitants were going nowhere, and Governor Aycock had found white and black alike "in a ditch". The legacy of desperate self-examination, it finds, ought not be sacrificed to the mediocre airs of the new notoriety. "The state will have better ways to use its energy."
Time did objectionably classify North Carolina in the piece as part of the "Deep South", which was a misclassification both geographically and in terms of the generally pejorative nature of that classification, that class generally starting at the South Carolina line and proceeding southward and westward, not really even including Virginia's greater recalcitrance to desegregation by far than in North Carolina. Of course, with Henry Luce, along with some of his quaint notions regarding the world situation, at the helm at the time, to become an ardent supporter in 1964 of Senator Barry Goldwater and his narrow-minded views on civil rights and eventually holding the opinion that the world was likely coming to an end in 1967, it is only surprising that any and all states which voted Democratic at the time were not classed by his publications as "Deep South".
The piece, in context, suggests that North Carolina became the first "Deep South" state to begin some marginal desegregation of the public schools in Greensboro, Winston-Salem and Charlotte, somehow forgetting that the D.C. schools, insofar as Southern-influenced areas, had been the first to desegregate, in 1954, and that Clinton, Tenn., certainly as deep a part of the South proper as North Carolina, had famously made the attempt in fall, 1956, and, of course, Little Rock, in 1957, had begun the process, as had Virginia, though, in those latter two instances, meeting considerable obstruction from the governors and legislatures of those states, albeit remaining under Federal court orders in each case to continue the desegregation which had been initiated. At least a properly asterisked footnote, as Time was wont to use, so indicating would have been appropriate and the generic classification of simply being part of "the South" would have been more apt to embrace North Carolina.
If it is a bit nit-picky, it is because "Deep South", as used generally across time in reportage of the era, referred to areas which traditionally had highly charged racial segregation, coupled with racial violence to enforce it, so ingrained in the culture that resistance, even if in varying forms from the relatively innocuous to the more serious, to desegregation of any degree in any context was inevitable. Generally, by 1959, North Carolina had gotten well beyond the tendencies to violence which still kept small-town Mississippi and Alabama, for instance, strictly mired in the past of the Reconstruction era, intransigently insistent on maintaining a caste system whereby poor whites had one caste below them on whom to look down both socially and economically, North Carolina having benefited from its unique cast of having been home to more abolitionists before the Civil War than any other Southern state.
That is not to say, obviously, that North Carolina was free from racial bias and even occasional examples of virulent racial hatred, though the latter was typically stimulated by some outsider from deeper Southern states. The tauntings of black demonstrators by young white reprobates at the sit-ins of the Woolworth lunch counter in February, 1960 in Greensboro, when the effort was made to desegregate same by informal action, provides the exception in high relief to prove the rule. But we begin to get into such sui generis situations, city by city, that the attempted analysis in broad strokes becomes nearly futile except by examining the particular industries characterizing those cities and thus governing the economic competition of the area surrounding them during the decades since Reconstruction, whether it was textiles or tobacco or some other, making the potential for considerable economic competition from blacks through the process of unionization a significant contributor, if sometimes unconsciously, to resistance to desegregation. The virulent racism, when it reared its ugly head, did not simply grow uniformly out of the soil of particular areas because of some contributing factor impacting all persons at once, regardless of socio-economic background and general level of education. Indeed, "Deep South", with its pejorative freight, ought be applied in the modern context only to those communities which violently resisted and actively organized through Citizens Councils to retard desegregation, rather than, per se, state by state, to be consistent, thus perhaps rendering the categorization fairly useless except as shorthand reference to such individual communities and situational efforts at desegregation resisted.
"Sorry, but They Couldn't Be Louder" finds it a strange line of folderol during the week when an itinerant "angry young man" from Britain, novelist John Braine, had said that he did not hear "people giving their opinions out loud about issues." It suggests that he must need a hearing aid.
It finds that in New York, former President Truman, when asked what the resignations of former White House chief of staff Sherman Adams, former Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey and former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles might mean for the Administration, had responded: "If I had been President, I'd have been very happy to lose those three fellows."
In Richmond, it had been reported that a newspaper editor had taken Mr. Truman to task for other remarks on the same occasion, picturing him as "a small-bore ignoramus" with "the mean, vindictive temper of a shanty Irish drunk."
In Washington, it had been reported that the recently confirmed Ambassador to Brazil Clare Boothe Luce had charged that her tempestuous times in the Senate went back years when Senator Wayne Morse had been "kicked in the head by a horse". The Senator had responded: "This is part of an old pattern of mental instability on her part."
It finds that the verbal debate thus had never been thicker and that in Mr. Braine's home country they had not had such an amusingly bombastic week of opinion since Harold Macmillan had become Prime Minister and a disgruntled Labor politician had described him as "a jaded Edwardian who sits all night composing 'spontaneous' epigrams to be delivered in the House of Commons." It indicates that it had noticed that Mr. Macmillan had said "boo to you" to some voter in Lancashire recently.
"Vanishing Americana" indicates that flag-snatchers had been out in force recently in Washington, that street employees reported 100 of 196 Irish flags stolen on the day of a parade for visiting President O'Kelly. It indicates that knowing the country's souvenir habits, a trip to the nation's capital was always a pleasant surprise, and it would have thought people would have carted off the White House, putting greens and all, long earlier.
A piece from the Richmond News Leader, titled "A Nice R. R. Today", indicates that the U.S. Weather Bureau had begun compiling a new index designed for the statistical edification of those who complained that "it isn't the heat, it's the humidity". Everybody knew of that condition. When it was 110 in Arizona, the people were swearing that they were happy, but when it was 85 in Washington, the people were simply swearing. The difference, according to those in Arizona, was that they had "dry heat".
The Weather Bureau had evolved a formula whereby adding the dry bulb temperature to the wet bulb temperature, multiplied by .4, and adding 15, provided weight to both heat and humidity and thus provided a useful and meaningful bit of information. But if the idea was sound, the nomenclature adopted by the Bureau struck it as pessimistic, as it called it the discomfort index. Every day, therefore, their first question would be whether they would be more discomfortable than the day before. The effect on the tourist trade inevitably had to be depressing for the tourists asking how bad their discomfort was.
Recently, it had encountered a nice day with a soft, warm breeze blowing, but the Weather Bureau had said, upon inquiry, that the discomfort index in Richmond was 64.2, which the woman said was good as discomfort was not felt until the index hit 70, when only 10 percent of the people complained, whereas at 75, half the people complained. At 79, everyone suffered.
It wonders whether the approach by the Bureau could not be reversed. "After all, the Atomic Energy Commission, when it began measuring radioactive fallout, computed its findings in terms of 'sunshine units.' If the figures were turned around, and maybe deducted from 100, Richmond on Friday could have advertised to the world a Riviera Rating of 35.8, an index so nearly ideal as to attract visitors from far and wide."
Assuming the piece to have been indited by Jack Kilpatrick, we begin to understand how it was that Senator Goldwater became the Republican standard-bearer in 1964, despite his enunciated "extremism in defense of liberty", nevertheless viewed simpatico with the candidate as being "not a vice".
Drew Pearson indicates that Senator John F. Kennedy, who had done a masterful job of piloting his labor bill through the Senate, had been leading the presidential polls for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. The Democrats had long contended that the polls did not mean much when they pertained to Republicans, and now a secret letter had come to light which indicated that they did not mean too much regarding Democrats either. The latter had been written by John Bailey, Democratic state chairman of Connecticut, on the stationery of the Democratic State Central Committee of Connecticut in Hartford. It was written in the form of a memo to all delegates and alternates to the 1956 national convention, and read: "I understand that all delegates to the 1956 national convention are being polled with respect to their preference in 1960. If you receive such inquiry may I suggest that you answer it, stating emphatically that you are for Senator John F. Kennedy—no second choice. This will be appreciated."
Mr. Bailey was the Democratic boss who had worked with Democratic Governor Abraham Ribicoff to rule out both former Governor Chester Bowles and former Senator William Benton, both Democrats, for the nomination to the Senate in favor of Thomas Dodd, who had been elected. Senator Dodd was a fine Senator and Mr. Ribicoff and Mr. Bailey had been criticized for shutting out two distinguished candidates, Mr. Benton and Mr. Bowles, because they were Protestants. In Connecticut, nomination was by convention, which the bosses dominated.
Ed Pauley, the big California oilman, former treasurer of the DNC and close friend of former President Truman, was on the way to getting a grip on the Democratic national convention to be held in Los Angeles in 1960. Mr. Pauley had underwritten part of the $325,000 expense of the convention to bring it to Los Angeles and now demanded as his reward 5,000 tickets, enough tickets to place friends of the candidate whom Mr. Pauley wanted to nominate all over the convention hall. After tickets were given to official delegates, there would be 7,000 left and of those, Mr. Pauley wanted 5,000. It could mean that Mr. Pauley's spectators could stage such a show for their candidate that he could stampede the convention. At the 1924 Democratic convention in New York, the forces of then-Governor Al Smith of New York had almost stampeded their man to the nomination. In Philadelphia, in 1940, Wendell Willkie's friends had packed the convention hall and he had won the Republican nomination. Mr. Pauley was one of those who worked backstage in Chicago in 1944 to break up the demonstration for Vice-President Henry Wallace and to nominate Senator Truman for vice-president. Never serving in a cabinet, as had James Farley, Mr. Pauley nevertheless had also been a president-maker, and now was reported to favor Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri for the Democratic nomination in 1960.
Doris Fleeson indicates that Washington had many self-inflicted wounds, sometimes remaining a riddle, as in the case of Sherman Adams, but it had rarely seen one more public and more dramatic than that which Clare Boothe Luce had brought on herself recently vis-à-vis Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, nor one which had brought swifter and more telling vengeance in its wake.
An unenthusiastic Senate had confirmed Mrs. Luce as Ambassador to Brazil, despite well-documented evidence of her political extremism. Within hours, she had coupled a tersely formal "I am grateful" acknowledgment with a direct and personal insult to Senator Morse, the chief spokesman for the doubts of the 11 Senators who had voted against her confirmation. She then heard from the Senate in a tense and emotional scene which veterans said had not been duplicated in the chamber. Senator Morse had read Mrs. Luce's statement to his colleagues and had replied to it equably with a touch of humor and a sober prayer for her success in her new post. With his customary blandness, Republican leader Everett Dirksen sought to pass off the incident as mere jest.
But Senator Frank Lausche of Ohio, a conservative, saw it differently, sketching a vignette of "an absence of rationality so serious that if she had made that statement before the vote was taken, I would not have voted in favor of her nomination." The Senator insisted that the Senate could not "stand idly by despite the power of this lady," even though he professed to believe that she had proved that she had the power to harm individual Senators and would do so. It was a direct challenge to the whole publishing empire of her husband, Henry Luce.
Another Senator who had voted for her confirmation, Ralph Yarborough of Texas, said, "We are sending to one of the largest nations in Latin America an ambassador more skilled in invective than in diplomacy." Senator Gale McGee of Wyoming expressed the hope that the President would withdraw her nomination. Informal opinion was that it was too late for the Senate to act and that the President had indicated that he would not withdraw the nomination. As Senator Morse had shown, the President's political debts to the Luces were many and heavy.
In New York, Mr. Luce had said that he had asked his wife to resign because her usefulness had been impaired by a "political vendetta" in the Senate. The story followed the outbreak occasioned by her statement but had not referred to it, so it was not immediately clear whether or not the outbreak triggered the statement.
Mrs. Luce's folly in so needlessly provoking the Senate was nevertheless on every tongue and could only injure her in any diplomatic role. Her worm's-eye view of the human race had been famous since, when she had been Clare Boothe, she had written The Women, a play in which every woman except one had been a cartoon and that one was not smart. In the political field, her razor tongue had too often seemed less the product of honest anger or hot partisanship than a cold aim for the jugular.
She had been confirmed for many reasons. Historically, the President was given the benefit of every doubt about the wisdom of his appointments. No Senator, without compelling reason, picked a fight with the Time-Life-Fortune publisher. Many Senators felt that Mrs. Luce had done a good job as Ambassador to Italy and some who had voted to confirm her for that post felt obliged to stand on that position.
But she would return to the Senate for another vote of confidence at her peril and she started for her post in Brazil with the burden which she had put on herself. Her husband had offered her the perfect exit from the situation, shouldering all of the blame himself, saying that her enemies were really the enemies of Time, Inc.
Meanwhile, on the second day of debate, Senate reaction to her sneers indicated widespread support for the charges of Senator Morse regarding her "instability". Mrs. Luce had returned to the attack with a demand upon Senate Republican leader Dirksen to clear her emotional name, and the latter had read to a sober Senate her doctor's statement that she was not and had not been under psychiatric care, a question which Senator Dirksen charged Senator Morse with exploring the previous week. Senator Morse had replied that he had investigated those reports and had only accidentally found himself talking to Mrs. Luce's present physician, saying that he did not then pursue the subject with the physician. An emotional exchange developed over such use of medical opinion.
Senator John Carroll of Colorado had removed some of the tension with his common sense reminder that thousands of investigations were made of Federal employees in sensitive positions which dealt with the problems of their emotional stability. He also brought out that Senator Morse did not raise the question in committee hearings on the nomination of Mrs. Luce. But Senators were uneasy for various reasons apart from the obvious one that such debate could do Mrs. Luce little good in her diplomatic role. They had grown very familiar with modern medicine through appropriating millions of dollars annually for research. There was no stigma attached at present to psychiatric care, the implication that there might be being repugnant to many Senators. The free use of medical opinion in the politics of the Administration was mentioned, though gingerly, in the debate.
Ms. Fleeson indicates that the Senate itself was sometimes not a model of emotional stability and so restraint was in order, when, on all sides, little restraint was evident. Two questions remained unanswered, one being whether the "out" given by Mr. Luce was devised in anticipation of a heavier vote against her confirmation than the 11 actually cast, or whether it was thrown into the breach left by her post-confirmation comments, with an informed guess indicating the former. The second question was what had inflamed Mrs. Luce to the point where, for the sake of two stale gibes, she had thrown prudence to the winds, it possibly being that her defender, Senator Dirksen, had irked her by an inadvertent remark, "Why beat a bag of old bones?" which had convulsed the Senate in laughter and received headlines.
"Here any woman of any age, race, religion, politics or economic condition will be on Mrs. Luce's side."
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain, indicates that A. A. Vautier remained in jail and he hopes that he stayed there until his lawyers accumulated enough evidence to make his case stand up strong and proud in court, with the editors noting that he had been released on bail pending resolution of his case. He lived in Pelham, N.H., and commuted to work in Boston. He had a wife and three children in New Hampshire but a job with income tax liability in Massachusetts. He was a civil engineer who had bought his knowledge the hard way including in the Civilian Conservation Corps camps, and had learned his profession in places such as Ireland and Tripoli.
Massachusetts, in 1955, had decided that they could tax people who lived outside the state but worked in it. Mr. Vautier had commuted to work in Boston in 1953, two years before that tax had taken effect. The back tax for 1956 was only $140.80. But he had refused to pay it or even the bond for it which would have kept him out of jail, as he regarded the principle to be higher than the money involved.
Mr. Ruark says that California had once tried to shake him down for state income tax, although he had never lived there or worked there more than briefly when merely passing through by writing his column there. He had never owned any property there or leased any, but, nevertheless, they had billed him. He had not lived in New York for six years, but received expensive tax demands from that state. He referred them to the IRS, which knew that he was living in Spain or Africa or Australia or England or New Jersey. Eventually, they had left him alone.
He indicates that W. C. Fields had once made the movie "You Can't Cheat an Honest Man" and he finds that he was basically right. Since his taxes were paid in Washington, in the Province of Gerona in Spain, in England, France, Germany, and several other places where they stripped away royalties, he knew that he did not have to pay in California or in New York, because he simply did not live there. That was a matter of record, but one never knew it if one talked to the state tax people, who had evidently gone through an old directory and chosen anyone who looked likely as an easy chump.
He says that he does not suppose that Mr. Vautier needed any help in his battle with Massachusetts, but that if he wanted a precedent, he could dig up some copy in which he had told California and New York to get very rudely lost, and had not heard a word from them since.
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