The Charlotte News
Saturday, May 16, 1959
ONE EDITORIAL
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Geneva that the Western powers this date had been reported willing to discuss Berlin apart from their package plan for Germany in an attempt to break the impasse with the Soviets. The Big Four foreign ministers conference had recessed during the weekend with the Soviets still insisting on the signing of a peace treaty with the two German states. But hope persisted among Western diplomats for finding a formula for agreement on the future of divided Berlin. The crisis triggered by the Soviet demand for Western withdrawal from West Berlin was expected to move steadily to the fore during the second week of the conference, to begin on Monday. Whether there was any basis for agreement, however, remained to be seen, as the Soviet Union had thus far stood firm on its demand for demilitarization of West Berlin and the Western powers were standing firm on their refusal to abandon the Communist-encircled city. Secretary of State Christian Herter was flying to Rome this date for a quick one-day good will visit. French Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville was headed to Paris to consult with Premier Charles de Gaulle while Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd were remaining in Geneva. Mr. Gromyko and his advisers, presumably in long-range consultation with the Kremlin, were reported to be preparing a point-by-point reply to the Western package plan. Mr. Gromyko had already turned down the package as a whole, denouncing it as a tangle of unrelated issues which would make any progress impossible. Western officials said that he might pull various points out of the package and seek to discuss them individually. Berlin was one such issue, despite that Communist spokesmen had rebuffed the specific Western proposal for merging West and East Berlin into a single city under four-power guarantees. Another possibility foreseen by the Western experts was that Mr. Gromyko might try to extract further concessions from the Western powers regarding direct negotiations between East and West German representatives. In their plan, the four Western ministers offered creation of an East-West German committee to draft an all-German election law. Mr. Gromyko might try to expand that point to meet his proposal for East-West German government negotiations on reunification. Mr. Gromyko had countered on Friday with his own proposal, which, regarding the main point of German peace settlement, was the exact reverse of what the West had proposed. Instead of making a peace treaty with a united Germany, Mr. Gromyko called for immediate conclusion of a peace treaty to be signed with both East and West Germany and then to leave up to them the reunification issue.
Also in Geneva, it was reported by Associated Press correspondent Eddy Gilmore that the city was overflowing as waves of delegates, conference workers, newsmen, cameramen and call girls flooded the city. One hotel manager said, "We're so full of conference guests and tourists that we're sending new arrivals to hotels as far away as Lausanne," 40 miles from Geneva. Commenting on the call girls, a local newspaper, the Geneva Diplomat, had said: "The French and Swiss frontier guard authorities are on special lookout—at the three railroad entrances, four main custom ports and 25 road entries—for the 'seagull' [call girls] invasion from Marseille and Paris. Ever since General De Gaulle cracked down on French hotel owners who harbor women of easy virtue the poor dears have found slim pickings in what was once La Belle France." About 1,200 reporters, cameramen, radio and television men and women were covering the foreign ministers conference. There were nearly 500 delegates, advisers and workers also present. The Soviets had about 120, the French, 80, the West Germans, 80, the U.S., 75, Britain, 70, and East Germany, 60. In addition, Geneva was also playing host to the World Health Organization meeting, as well as to other organizations.
The President headed for Colorado this date to tour the Air Force Academy and visit his ailing mother-in-law. He would greet the Air Force Academy's first graduating class and get his first on-the-ground look at the school which was located on the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains at Colorado Springs. Accompanying the President from Washington were Air Force Secretary James Douglas and General James White, Air Force chief of staff. Also going along were the President's son, Army Maj. John Eisenhower, his wife, and their four children. He was expected to remain at the Academy for at least a couple of hours and from there the entourage would fly north to Denver, a 15-minute flight. Denver was the home of Mrs. Eisenhower's mother, Mrs. John S. Doud, who had turned 81 the previous Wednesday. The First Lady was already at her mother's residence, having arrived earlier in the week by train. During the weekend, the President and other members of the family would stay at Denver's Brown Palace Hotel, which had been his headquarters during the early part of the 1952 political campaign. All of the Eisenhowers planned to return to Washington the following day. It would be the President's third visit to Denver since he had suffered a heart attack there in September, 1955. As he had done during the previous visit, he was expected to pass up playing golf. Denver was situated at mile-high altitude and since his heart attack, his doctor, Maj. General Howard Snyder, had been cautious about the President's golfing at such altitudes.
At Monticello, N.Y., it was reported that Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois, speaking the previous night at the 12th annual convention of the American Veterans Committee, said that the White House ought set an example for economy by cutting down on presidential expenses. He claimed that White House expenses under the President were twice what they had been under President Truman, specifically citing expenditures for new limousines, helicopters and personnel.
In Washington, it was reported that the condition of John Foster Dulles had worsened and his family, including his brother, Allen, director of the CIA, had gathered to be close to him. The former Secretary of State, weakened by his cancer which had spread through his body, had contracted a mild case of pneumonia the previous weekend, according to State Department press officer Lincoln White, who added that the pneumonia had not completely been resolved and there had been further decline in his general condition. He had entered Walter Reed Army Hospital the prior February 12. In 1956, an operation had removed a cancerous growth in his colon. In February, in the course of a hernia operation, Army doctors had discovered that the cancer had spread. They gave Mr. Dulles huge radiation treatments, both with a giant X-ray machine and by injecting radioactive gold salts into his abdomen. In April, he had left the hospital briefly for a stay in Florida. For a time it had appeared that his tremendous powers of recuperation and will to go on would prevail. But on April 12, he had returned to the hospital, where the doctors reported that the cancer had spread to his neck. On April 15, the President, with great reluctance, announced the resignation of Mr. Dulles as Secretary of State, while the President retained him as a personal consultant. Mr. Dulles reportedly had forced the President's hand in the resignation so that the way would be cleared for Christian Herter, who had been Acting Secretary during the illness, to take over as Secretary and carry on the duties of Mr. Dulles with full authority at the foreign ministers conference.
In Kansas City, Mo., it was reported that Bess Truman, wife of the former President, was undergoing a routine checkup in Research Hospital, where she had entered on Thursday. A hospital spokesman said that she was not ill.
In New York, entertainer Arthur Godfrey had said "au revoir" to public life for 60 days to follow the orders of his doctors for recuperation from his lung cancer operation. The CBS radio and television star had left Columbia Presbyterian Hospital on Friday as a weak, trembling man but grateful to be alive. Although aides tried to hustle him away to his New York apartment, he refused, speaking to the press and asking through reporters to convey his thanks to the many well-wishers who had followed the results of his surgery. Later, from his Manhattan home, he had dictated a 1,000-word statement released for publication through CBS, concerning the recent operation and hopes for the future. He told newsmen, "I got a break—he got it out, under circumstances so trying that one slip one way or the other and I wouldn't be here talking to you." He said he knew why he had gotten the break, that it was because "so many people prayed for it. I'll have to admit that I didn't pray for it, because I never ask for anything for myself and besides, I have already had too many breaks. I only ask to be worthy of whatever is granted." He concluded: "Now, these doctors who performed this miracle of surgery have given me strong orders. I said, 'What are your orders?' They answered: 'No conferences. No business. No interviews. No tiring endeavors of any kind for at least 60 days. For two months you are to lie on the beach. If you do that you will make a good recovery.' So, ladies and gentlemen of the Fourth Estate and, through you, to my wonderful friends throughout the land, I say, Au revoir. I will not bother you again for 60 days. But look for me after I get the okay to go ahead because I mean it when I say I'm grateful for this break and will try to prove myself worthy of it." After spending some time in Denver at his home, the 55-year old Mr. Godfrey would go to his 1,500-acre Virginia farm. He would return to the air in September. He would live another 24 years.
In Denver, an explosion had destroyed the first stage of a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile on Friday as it sat in a test stand in the mountain foothills southwest of the city. The Martin Co., which manufactured the missile, said that the test area had been cleared of personnel and no one had been injured. The 56-foot first stage and the 37-foot second stage, in a separate test nearby, were being used in a static sequence test directed from a concrete blockhouse 600 yards away. The cause of the explosion had not immediately been determined.
In New York, about 1,400 striking employees of NBC had voted to end a work stoppage which had begun on April 27. NBC television and radio operations had been continuing with supervisory personnel taking over in place of the striking technicians. The technicians and engineers had voted by secret ballot in seven cities on Friday, agreeing to a settlement under which NBC had dropped its damage suits against the union, which in turn relinquished all claims to jurisdiction over broadcasts taped outside the U.S. The issue of the foreign tape-recorded broadcasts had initiated the dispute. Dave Garroway's "Today" program had been videotaped in Paris with the help of some nonunion technicians. When it was time to air the broadcast, including an interview with Brigitte Bardot, technicians would not handle it, thus knocking both television and radio networks off the air for two hours. The union, the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, claimed that the union members had merely stopped to write grievances and that the stoppage was a lockout. The union had no comment on any of the terms of the settlement. NBC had said that the settlement included the agreement that the union would give up all claims of jurisdiction over broadcasts tape made outside the country, that NBC had the sole right to determine the methods of operations and to make work assignments, subject to revised arbitration provisions, and that interference with company operations through mass writing of grievances would be prohibited.
In Mattoon, Ill., seven young people who had just left a high school dance had been killed early this date and one critically injured at a grade crossing collision with an Illinois Central passenger train. The 20-car "Louisiane", bound for New Orleans from Chicago, had carried the automobile a quarter of a mile. The dead ranged in age between 16 and 19. One had died at the hospital several hours after the wreck. The sole survivor, 22, was the brother of the 19-year old who had died, both of whom were University of Illinois students. An Illinois Central spokesman said that the passenger train normally sped through the Mattoon area at 70 to 75 mph. Parents of other children who had attended the prom had been alarmed by inquiries made as authorities attempted to identify the dead. Some had received inquiries about the wreck before their children had returned home. Identification finally had been completed after someone thought to look at the initials on class rings which the victims had been wearing. The principal of the high school said that prior to that, they could not tell who the dead were and he did not know what to do and so began calling parents to ask whether their children were at home. Among the parents frightened had been the deputy coroner of the county, whose two children had not returned home at the time of the call. The collision occurred at a dirt road crossing two miles north of Mattoon. The tracks ran adjacent to U.S. Highway 45 where police said that the students, returning from the Shelbyville High School prom, had turned off onto the dirt road.
In St. Petersburg, Fla., a motorist shot himself on Friday while driving along a main thoroughfare in his car and thereafter had run down three pedestrians. The driver, 22, and one of the pedestrians, 70, had died in a hospital and the other pedestrians had been seriously injured. After the driver had shot himself in the head, his car had smashed into a taxi, then struck the pedestrians. The deceased pedestrian had been caught underneath the car and dragged half a city block before a bystander had stopped the car. Police said that the man had shot himself in front of the business firm from which he had recently been fired as an investment company clerk.
In St. Louis, it was reported that a family of five had perished early this date in a fire which had engulfed their home in north St. Louis County. The previous night, 160 miles to the south, four children had been killed in a fire which had destroyed their frame farm home near Neelyville. The St. Louis County victims had been a mother, a father and their three children, ages eight months to seven years. The fire in Riverview, a suburban community near the Mississippi River, had been discovered by a neighbor upon returning home from work, indicating that the house was a mass of flames and that he had been unable to arouse anyone. Police said that the victims had died of smoke inhalation. The fire near Neelyville had killed four children of a couple who had moved there recently from Tucson. The couple and another daughter, two, had escaped but the mother had been burned on the hands and face while rescuing the daughter. A neighbor said that he had been awakened by the woman's screams and had run to the scene, that when he arrived, the house was a mass of flames and the three survivors were sitting on the ground in hysterics.
On the editorial page, "Government by the Power of the Pen", an editorial book review of The Fourth Branch of Government, by Douglass Cater, indicates that in England 131 years earlier, in 1828, Lord Macaulay had the first inkling of press power in democracy when he observed: "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm."
Mr. Cater indicated that in Washington in 1959, the gallery in which the reporters sat held sway as never before. The press were more than a fourth estate but formed a "fourth branch of the government". Mr. Cater, the Washington editor of The Reporter, examined the new branch and the sources and uses of its power.
It finds that books such as the one being reviewed testified that, for better or worse, government was of men and laws, that even among the tribunes of the people, the correspondents, there occasionally strayed a not-too-vicious wolf such as White House press secretary James Hagerty, Life, Time and Fortune publisher Henry Luce, or columnist Joseph Alsop. Before the Civil War, the young Henry Adams had entered Washington as a reporter, conscious that he would not only pursue the will-o'-the-wisp "fact", but would also conjure it from the political swamp, with his own pen being the wand. Mr. Cater had said, "He was unabashed at the idea of using his column as an instrument of influence and special pleading rather than as a vehicle for enlightening his readers."
But it was not to suggest that reporters were all blackguards or that they were using the public, as Mr. Cater had written of a conspiracy of innocence, that in the last resort, the press was innocent, the public servants about whom they wrote were innocent, and the public were innocent, that the high-speed press, the telegraph wire and the television set in every home had ripped down the old curtains of government. Democracy and publicity had grown up holding hands so hard that it was difficult to tell one from the other. Also, events of government had never taken place "out there" somewhere and so had an independent stance apart from what was said and thought about them. That, in combination with the telegraph wire and the mass-circulation "public media", had made government to a large extent what the newspapers said it was.
It examines some of Mr. Cater's examples. In 1947, Winston Churchill had declared devastated Europe a "charnel house … a rubble heap." Secretary of State George Marshall, President Truman and others knew that if Europe were to rise from the dead, it would need unprecedented American economic aid. As always, Midwestern isolationism had offered a barrier, but as it turned out, when the Marshall Plan had been proposed by the Secretary in a commencement address at Harvard, it also gathered isolationist sentiment. But the power of the press had entered into that equation. The voices of the hinterlands were not "newsworthy" as weighed against the spontaneous reaction from abroad. In the capitals of Europe, Britain's Aneurin Bevan and France's Georges Bidault were hailing the Plan and obtaining the headlines. Before its opponents would capture the initiative, public sentiment had gathered behind General Marshall. Most would say that in that instance, the force of the press was for good, but there could be no question as to its power.
"What we read in the papers, in short, often reflects the judgment of those who insert the news—the editors. But reporters make 'news' at the wellhead, as surely as the figures who play their roles as antagonist and protagonist in it. Mr. Cater cites presidential press conferences, where reporters may now dictate on what subjects the head of state's influential opinion is to be heard. They ask the questions; and Ike himself once complained: 'They never give me a chance to talk about defense.' Reporters have occasionally informed the President—who does not exactly devour their products—of what is going on."
It indicates that Rowland Evans of the New York Herald Tribune had done so inadvertently one day in 1957 when he had asked the President whether he thought it wise to give the Attorney General indictment power in integration cases, to which the President had responded: "Well, no…" His halting answer showed that he was unfamiliar with the proposal. The President was often heard to say, "Now you're telling me something about my work I haven't heard…" Sometimes such a reply sparked action.
Regarding outright manipulation, among the many examples cited by Mr. Cater was that of Mr. Hagerty, an ex-journalist, who understood the needs of reporters, nevertheless often playing on them. When the President took a vacation, Mr. Hagerty took along newsworthy papers and asked them to be released under a dateline from either Augusta or Gettysburg, encouraging stories about the communications network linking the President to Washington, and did not deny that he sometimes invited Cabinet members to visit the vacation locus. He had said, "Maybe I do." When the President was recuperating from an illness, Mr. Hagerty had a prepared statement to be read by a visiting Cabinet member on how well the President looked. As Mr. Cater related it, Mr. Hagerty personally had directed the creation and subsequent deflation of the "Geneva spirit" during the summit conference of mid-summer, 1955.
It indicates that the puissant members of the press would be impotent without the helping hand of officials, but those officials, noting the enthronement of the press, had bowed obligingly. Congressmen sought the advice of reporters on occasion on crucial votes and other officials conducted "leak" sessions, all maintaining a close eye on the techniques of ballyhoo when they were locked in tight maneuver. Sometimes, public officials tapped public opinion by allowing reporters to quote them anonymously as "high government sources". Former Secretary of State Dulles was an acknowledged virtuoso at that craft. During the Formosa crisis the previous fall, he had played both ends against the middle as "a high government official" by first threatening use of nuclear weapons in the Formosa Strait, and then officially denying any thought of the possibility.
Yet, it could not be said that the antics of the press and its collaborators were diabolical. If there were a conspiracy, something Mr. Cater did not call it, it was one of innocence in which most of the cohorts were simply people doing their jobs as they saw fit. Often the kingpin journalists knew more about government and its dilemmas than public servants did and it was inescapable that they ought occupy "the fourth branch of government". There was, however, irony in the reticulation, as the public and journalists, except for a handful of pioneers such as the New York Times or the Christian Science Monitor, still thought that government was a disembodied "objective" machine running on "out there". If that were true, "news" would be like a photograph.
It finds that Mr. Cater, nevertheless, was not alone when he said that government was an artifice in which the observers were deeply involved. The historians and recorders, the journalists, were as much involved in what the public saw, read and heard as a sculptor was involved in the statue sculpted. It needed to be recognized, Mr. Cater had pleaded, that reporters needed latitude to be better and more truthful artists. The illusion of "objectivity" was never more dangerous than when placed at the mercy of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who had quickly discovered "the inherent vulnerabilities—the frozen patterns of the press … and played upon [them] with unerring skill."
"No one questions the press' value as a sentinel. But when it opens itself by stubbornly maintaining outmoded traditions to the use of demagogues, it is a menace."
Note to all of the purveyors and dedicated listeners of Fox Propaganda, News Maximus-Minimus, and Oh, goddamnit, Answer the Nutphone: Reread carefully that last sentence and understand its import vis-à-vis your dedicated relationship to Trump and other demagogues of his stripe, dedicatedly leading the country into ultra-right wing fascism, all for the aggrandizement of their own power and desired place in history, a pure vanity project, as surely as was that of Hitler and Mussolini, who believed in nothing more profound than themselves and their ability to convince the underlings of their expressed view of the world, designed to echo the chants they heard from the street corners and in bars from the underlings. It did not turn out so well. When yellow journalism becomes an object in itself, and not just a casual byproduct of fledgling amateurs seeking an audience among the undereducated and easily influenced, it becomes a dangerous and calculated tool of radicalization of parts of the population, even if small in numbers, capable of altering the very shape of our democracy to something unrecognizable and monstrous. That is happening before our eyes at present in 2026.
A piece from Svenska Dagbladet, in Stockholm, Sweden, titled "Veritas?" indicates that Julius Caesar had not only been a great general and politician but was also one of the world's best traffic experts. Traffic problems during Caesar's Rome had not been as bad as in present times, but before his death, he had introduced one-way traffic, set up parking lots for chariots, and forbade trucking wagons from loading or unloading during rush hours.
What did he do about the Vandals?
Did he make up stories about the Vandals taking their knives and
cutting the heads off the parking meters when they found that the
heads of the parking meters, contracted for by one of Caesar's
friends on a no-bid contract at ten times the going rate for new
parking meters, were not working, even with the deposit of the new coin of the realm, bearing Caesar's head on one side and Caesar's head again on the obverse, with the inscribed legend, "Pugnas, Pugnas, Pugnas sicut infernum"? This is what happens when thugs
Drew Pearson indicates that when French comedian Maurice Chevalier had kissed the hand of First Lady Mamie Eisenhower and murmured "merci beaucoup" recently, it had been more than just a gallant gesture, as M. Chevalier owed his life to the President. It was a little-known story of the war, but M. Chevalier had almost faced a French firing squad 14 years earlier in Paris. When the American forces, led by the French Second Armored Division under General Philippe Leclerc, had first entered Paris in 1945, the Free French had gone crazy with excitement and pounced on various alleged Nazi collaborators, among them M. Chevalier, for his having entertained in Germany during the occupation. He was tried by the French underground, the Maquis, and sentenced to be executed within two days. At that point, David Rose of Paramount Pictures had arrived in Europe on an Army plane, and learning of M. Chevalier's plight, had contacted Col. Jock Lawrence, former public relations expert for Hollywood studios who was then serving on General Eisenhower's staff. Col. Lawrence started an investigation and found that M. Chevalier had staged performances in Germany during the war on the promise that for each appearance before French prisoners, a certain number of those prisoners would be released. Meanwhile, time was running out and in another few hours M. Chevalier would be no more. Mr. Lawrence was able to attract the ear of Capt. Harry Butcher, a close friend of General Eisenhower, and the latter had ordered a full-dress inquiry, stipulating that M. Chevalier would be kept alive until the inquiry was complete. The inquiry proved that M. Chevalier was correct. Thus, the latter had kissed Mrs. Eisenhower's hand recently and was speaking from his heart when he said, in French, "Thank you very much."
John Patterson, Governor of Alabama, had banned the United Press from his office. Recently, the Alabama House had extended the privileges of its floor to the Grand Dragon of the Klan, Robert Shelton, of Tuscaloosa. The Governor had been irked by the UPI report that Charles Merriwether, his finance director, would be ousted.
Col. Robert Schulz, military aide to the President, who was over 50, had just become a father for the third time.
He indicates that the march of the lame ducks continued, with the Senate having just confirmed two former members of Congress defeated for re-election. Former Senator Frank Barrett of Wyoming had been confirmed to be general counsel for Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, and Joe Talbott, former Congressman from Connecticut, was getting another term on the Tariff Commission, despite being a protectionist when the President favored reciprocal trade.
Joseph Alsop, in Geneva, indicates that in the American and French delegations at the foreign ministers conference there was increasing disquiet about the British delegation's tendency to concede points to the Soviets. The arguments thus far had primarily concerned procedural matters, but the Soviets were known to regard such arguments, even on such an insignificant thing as the shape of the conference table, to be highly significant tests of will. Thus, every trivial concession made to the Soviets at the outset meant an insistent Soviet demand for a much larger concession later. That provided the explanation for the seemingly bizarre intensity of the preliminary debates.
Even so, the British tendency to give way to those preliminary issues would be causing only momentary concern if it were not for certain other developments elsewhere. He points, for example, to the news which had reached Geneva that the Federation of British Industries and Reuters news agency had both decided to open offices in the East German Republic. Because of the timing and other circumstances, it was hard to believe that the decision by Reuters and the Federation had not been officially approved or even encouraged.
One of the issues in dispute at the conference was the Soviet demand for some kind of de facto recognition of the Communist regime in East Germany. The British believed that de facto recognition ought be provided, and the move by Reuters and the Federation appeared to be a unilateral first step in the direction desired by the British Foreign Office, opposed by the Western allies.
Reports had also reached Secretary of State Christian Herter and the French Foreign Minister, Maurice Couve de Murville, regarding Anglo-Soviet transactions which would set a new pattern. The reports, apparently coming from Turkish and German sources, suggested that an important Anglo-Soviet economic and political deal had been made in the midst of the Berlin crisis. It was alleged that the British Government had tentatively agreed to extend a massive purchasing credit to the Soviet Government so as to increase Soviet trade with Britain. It was further alleged that the Soviets had undertaken to order the Arab Communist parties not to disturb British oil interests in the Middle East, in return for a British undertaking to consider problems outside that region more sympathetically to the Soviets. On their face, the reports were incredible and were not believed for a series of obvious reasons by the Americans and the French. Yet, the evidence cited, though not constituting proof of the reports, was somewhat troubling.
Behind the story of a massive British credit to the Soviets, there was the fact that the president of the Board of Trade, David Eccles, had just left for Moscow to seek better Anglo-Soviet commercial relations. His mission had received a major sendoff, appearing to treat the Berlin crisis as business as usual.
Mr. Alsop finds that when combined, there was too much raw material for a bad understanding between the Americans, the French and the British. On the one crucial point, the sanctity of the freedom of West Berlin, the British had sworn they would never give way, appearing to be sincere. On other points of substance and tactics, however, the British were widely separated from the other allies, the separation being made worse by the sorts of things he had already described in the piece. Some of those things, such as the ill-timed opening of two semi-official offices in West Germany, seemed to constitute legitimate grounds for complaint.
He indicates that the Anglo-American alliance had always been the heart of the Western alliance and so it would seem to be time for Secretary Herter and Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd to thrash out their differences with all the cards on the table.
A letter from the president of the Mecklenburg County Republican Women's Club indicates that it endorsed the request of the League of Women Voters that the question of having voting machines in Mecklenburg County be put to a vote of the people in connection with the forthcoming school bond election. She indicates that the present method of casting and counting ballots was outmoded and inadequate for the present large and complicated elections. The extremely long hours invited inaccuracies because even the most careful and conscientious precinct officials could not help but become tired and inefficient after 12 to 20 hours of continuous duty. No business would expect good performance under such conditions and it was a tribute to the poll workers that the results had been comparatively free from errors. While the costs were relatively high for the machines, compared to present and future costs of the outmoded system, those arguments lost validity. The registrars, judges, clerks and counters were paid on a scale based on the long hours required and that scale had practically doubled in the previous decade and was rising at a rapid rate, in the previous year having risen by 50 percent, while it nevertheless remained difficult to attract competent workers. A reduction in hours for daytime workers and the elimination of several hundred counters with the purchase of the machines would save thousands of dollars per election. Furthermore, the machines could be bought on long-term payment plans or could be rented, with a generous portion of the rental applied to ultimate purchases. (How about negotiating for a pre-Christmas one-day trial, and then immediate return to the manufacturer in time for the Christmas rush?) She indicates that there would be additional savings on the cost of ballots and the cost of recounts. One recount and the subsequent investigation in just one small precinct had recently cost about $1,000. Other objections, such as storage, transportation and maintenance of the machines were not trivial but were far from insurmountable. They had been solved by hundreds of other communities where machines were used and they were sure that the Election Board, if so instructed, would find out how those matters were handled elsewhere. It thus urges the County Board of Commissioners and the City Council to look into the matter forthwith, not only for the present but also for the long-term future. She indicates, for the sake of Republicans in the county, that elections there would no longer consist of Democratic primaries with only a rump slate of Republicans in the general election, that henceforth, there would be Republican primaries for most, if not all, officials, and a full ticket in the general election. Precinct officials who presently worked into the wee hours of the morning and might still be counting at sunrise, had to endure inhuman conditions and it was unwise to force that upon them each election day. She advocates having voting machines in place for the 1960 elections.
As indicated, we know that they had machines on site for the 1960 elections in Winston-Salem, as we distinctly remember our parents showing up to vote for Senator Kennedy on November 8, waving to us in the school lunchroom as they did so. There was no way in hell either one would have voted for the "lantern-jawed" Mr. Nixon, as our by then late-grandmother on the distaff side used to call him, asking that the channel be changed to get him off the air. That is not to say that they voted for Senator Kennedy only by default. (We admit that Mr. Nixon almost had us in a moment of empathy, perhaps a Stockholm syndrome moment, when he was shown on television on the White House floor rolling around, playing with the red Irish setter, King Timahoe, on Christmas morning, 1969—but that was short-lived...)
A letter writer from Matthews indicates that Julian Scheer, in his column of May 12, had told in a short item of "St. Harry of Charlotte" bringing the house down at the University of Missouri School of Journalism with the utterance, "Since the Knights purchased The Charlotte News, there are now only two publishers in Charlotte—the Knights and Harry Golden." He wants to inform Mr. Golden that there were several publishers in Charlotte. "St. Harry, the great 'integrationist' and creator of plans, is oblivious of one very fine weekly newspaper published in Charlotte. The Charlotte Post is a Negro weekly published and edited by Dr. J. S. Nathaniel Tross." He doubts that Carl Sandburg or Adlai Stevenson was a subscriber to that newspaper but indicates that it was an outstanding paper nevertheless and wants to inform Mr. Golden that one did not have to be "white" to be counted a publisher in Charlotte. He adds a "P.S." for Mr. Scheer: "How in the world did 'bull-shooting' Harry Golden substitute for 'hell-raising' Harry Truman? That is about like Bertie Ritter, [the author of the letter], substituting for Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt."
A letter from Butner, from retired Brig. General of the Army, Hugh Hester, indicates that after 40 years of false and vicious propaganda inherent in the cold war, perhaps he should not be surprised at letters such as that of J. R. Cherry, Jr., appearing May 12. He finds that Mr. Cherry obviously had little confidence in American maturity and even less in the principles of Christianity. He indicates that while stationed in Berlin with the U.S. Military Government between 1945 and 1947, he had many opportunities to hear Russian Army officers and was certain that even Mr. Cherry would have benefited and might even have approved of their performances. "Music fortunately is neutral so far as the cold war propaganda is concerned, and the more the artists of the Soviet Union and the U.S. can exchange visits the better for our understanding between the peoples of the two nations." He indicates that if democracy were as good as he thought it was, there was nothing to lose and much to gain from such exchanges. He finds that even if "the rulers of Russia [were] unprincipled rogues and cutthroats of the lowest rank," as Mr. Cherry had suggested, which they were not, it would still be within the country's interest to increase to the maximum those cultural exchanges. "What does Mr. Cherry think has happened to the redemptive features of the Christian example in the pull of the free life? I should think he would be in their pitching for the opportunity to save the lost souls."
He makes the mistake of assuming that Mr. Cherry was somehow aligned with true Christian values, when all he wanted was authoritarianism to prevail in the United States, not much distinguishable from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. His continued alliance, even after death, with the late Senator McCarthy, proves the point.
A letter from Florence, S.C., from a Boy Scout executive of the Pee Dee Area Council, indicates that the Boy Scout Circus held on May 8 had been a tremendous success and that the participation of the boys and the overflow crowd was in large part the result of the outstanding publicity received prior to it. It expresses appreciation and thanks to the newspaper for helping.
A letter writer from Gaffney, S.C., indicates that Robert Heinlein, "one of the most popular novelists in the field of scientific romance", had once remarked that "a man who can read and write is nine-tenths free even in chains." Whether one shared the viewpoint or not, there was little doubt that the ability to read and write were two of the most unique and important talents of the human race. It was generally agreed that writing was the second most efficient means of communication between intelligent beings and also the only way by which one generation became acquainted with the ideas and accomplishments of the preceding generation. It was in that way that knowledge was passed on from age to age. Mathematics was a field in which accumulated knowledge had been used to great advantage, based on earlier Greek thinkers and others, to advance human kind. He says he had always been an omnivorous reader and consequently amazed at the vast number of people who had a disdainful attitude toward the written word. "To me a newsstand is irresistible, and a public library is a place of pure magic, where the greatest minds of all time wait to confirm their thoughts to any person, of any age or social position, who cares to linger with them. Contained within the walls of libraries is the sum total of human knowledge, and it is as free—and as beneficial—as the very air we breathe. Yet a shockingly small number of people ever take advantage of it. Too many look on the written word as merely a dark mark on paper, without considering the effect reading and writing have had on the history of the human race, or the effect they will have on generations yet to come." He concludes: "Pity the man who cannot read, but pity more the man who can read but doesn't fully utilize his talent."
Well, we can't read yet, and so we just go 'round and 'round the house every day for a couple of hours, making up a kind of soap opera in our head, 'round and 'round, counterclockwise, always.
Framed Edition
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