NOTES IN THE NEWS
Notes in the News Trial by President Too many district attorneys, police officers, and other law-enforcement officials have a deplorable predilection for issuing sweeping statements about persons...
...Few Latin governments have adopted systematic tax reforms which would both stimulate economic growth and finance a massive expansion of social services...
...But precious few acres have actually been distributed so far to the land-hungry and restless peasants...
...It was such an ill-advised performance that Mrs...
...Such a policy is tragically shortsighted...
...In return for apparent equanimity for a few more years, the world will have to contend in the foreseeable future with a Latin America in turmoil...
...It will be encouraged, more than ever, either during the Klan hearings or at future inquiries, to continue its old practices of abusing witnesses, holding star chamber proceedings, leaking charges to the press, accusing without proof, and wandering far outside its jurisdiction...
...Lack of tire standards and deceptive labels make it almost hopeless for the buyer to be certain of getting quality, or even safe, tires...
...Argentina's country-doctor president, Arturo Illia, has had some modest success in rebuilding that country's shattered economy, but the legislative elections held in March suggest that the urban and rural masses are not impressed...
...Time is running out, as Teodoro Moscoso, the first coordinator of the Alliance, has warned...
...In Brazil, the military regime during the last year has been reluctant to take firm steps leading toward structural reforms...
...Once the "showcase" of the Alliance, Colombia under the present administration of Guillermo Leon Valencia has little to show for his thirty-two months in office except some success in reducing guerrilla activity and banditry in the poverty-ridden backlands...
...Taking refuge in the current calm, the State Department has reduced if not eliminated the diplomatic pressure that the Kennedy Administration applied, if only intermittently, to these countries in an effort to persuade them to fulfill their commitment, freely adopted at Punta del Este, to promote structural reforms in return for economic assistance...
...in that event an orderly, democratic social revolution of the type envisaged in the Alliance for Progress will be impossible...
...The Alliance at Four The Alliance for Progress, without a great deal of attention in the press, recently observed its fourth anniversary...
...But a less attractive aspect of this complex President was exposed by his companion appointment to the FPC of Carl E. Bagge, in what was obviously a deal with Senate Minority Leader Everett M. Dirksen...
...Contrary to growers' claims, Wirtz found no shortage of local labor, especially with 400,000 unemployed in California, many of whom could be readily trained to do field work...
...For the Court to have made any other decision, Douglas observed, would have denied them the right of conscientious objection...
...Supreme Court, the third branch of the Federal government, has chosen this moment in history to affirm that in our Constitutional system a man has a right to refuse to kill for his country's official purposes, even if the drummer that he hears is not a supreme being in the conventional religious sense...
...The American Automobile Association, the National Safety Council, the National Tire Dealers and Retreaders Association are among the organizations which want minimum safety standards established...
...Viola Liuzzo, the white civil rights worker who was shot to death while driving between Montgomery and Sel-ma, Alabama...
...This testimony from manufacturers and dealers, safety experts and testing bureaus, he said, reveals a "national scandal in automobile tires...
...His is a position arrived at by intelligent analysis of the facts, but it is one that nevertheless required courage on Wirtz' part...
...HUAC and the Klan There was sufficient cause for grave concern in the announcement of the House Un-American Activities Committee that it would undertake an investigation of the Ku Klux Klan...
...Preliminary statistics for 1964 suggest that the rate may have climbed above three per cent...
...He noted that there are 177,000 Buddhists in the United States and that their concept of God is so unlike the conventional Western notion as to border on atheism...
...Wirtz took his unequivocal stand on the basis of his talks with scores of growers and hundreds of workers, and his inspection of fields, labor camps, kitchens, dining halls, toilets, and food processing plants—every facet of the largest food industry in the nation...
...The Peronistas captured thirty-six per cent of the total vote and tripled the number of their deputies in the national congress...
...Bagge's position on power regulation is not known, but it can be presumed that he will favor industry rather than the public because Dirksen nominated him and because his entire professional career has been with the Santa Fe railroad, which has extensive oil interests...
...The Dallas experience spurred the urgently-needed and still-continuing debate over the desirability of placing pre-trial statements by officials under restraints designed to curb "trial by headline...
...As if totally unaware of all this, President Johnson has not only engaged in the kind of practice for which district attorneys are rebuked, but he has done it on a far greater scale...
...He chose to go before the nation on television and radio, with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover at his side, to announce that the FBI had arrested four Klans-men in connection with the murder of Mrs...
...They have brought enormous pressure on Wirtz and on political leaders in both parties to retain the authority to import foreign workers...
...What is needed is for President Johnson, who has shown such an imaginative grasp of the imperative to wage war on poverty at home, to become more personally involved in the parallel war against poverty in the nations to the south of us...
...a motorist who buys what he thinks are bigger tires designed to carry heavier loads might wind up with smaller tires...
...Moscoso has implied that the Johnson Administration has lost interest in encouraging our partners in the Alliance to promote structural reforms...
...Johnson faces a crucial test of his political character when Swidler's term expires in June...
...Whether the President's action will in truth reduce the chances of these men for a fair trial, or whether it will in some way work to their advantage with an Alabama jury, remains to be seen...
...Of two labor camps, units of a chain housing 10,000 workers, Wirtz said they "made me ashamed that anything of this kind exists in this country...
...Power Play President Johnson is to be congratulated for his reappointment of Charles R. Ross to the Federal Power Commission...
...Don't rock the boat," was the policy of former assistant Secretary of State for Latin America, Thomas Mann...
...But the news concerning agriculture is disquieting...
...With this kind of bloody tribute to the motor age going on year after year, it has been estimated that an American's chance of going through life without being injured in a car crash is no better than 50-50...
...But we believe he should have declared his indigna-, tion against the deed and against "persons unknown" who perpetrated it...
...Solid achievements have begun to emerge, but laced between the accomplishments are some disappointing failures...
...Johnson's political character that has its roots in the New Deal of the Thirties, which emphasized a concern for people rather than for special interests...
...Ross has demonstrated a clear understanding that the purpose of the FPC is to provide effective, professional regulation of availability and cost of power, always in the best interests of the public...
...Latin America needs some fifteen million new low-cost housing units...
...The most encouraging developments have been in the fields of industrial growth and long-range planning...
...President Johnson, in reporting the news of the arrests, denounced the Ku Klux Klan as a "hooded society of bigots" and suggested that Congress investigate it...
...A Different Drummer The Administration escalates the war in Vietnam on some curious theory that the slaughter of more and still more human beings will somehow bring peace and tranquility among the nations and the people within them...
...The resurgence of the Peronistas is a symptom of the profound dissatisfaction of the working class with the timid, middle-class regime which governs in the shadow of the army's veto...
...that some station wagons which ideally require eight-ply tires are equipped with only four-ply, and many firms are shifting down to two-ply tires...
...The cost of maintaining labor camps will increase, since the use of American workers will require more family-type housing...
...Actually, many of them are sitting on a time bomb...
...Furthermore, Latin America's rapidly expanding population is creating economic and social pressures that will soon become explosive...
...Such a purpose requires exploring the unlawful acts—not the thoughts, opinions, or associations—of terrorist groups, and probing the failures of Southern sheriffs, police, and courts to enforce existing state laws against terriorism, including cases in which officials actually participated, encouraging or condoning violence against civil rights workers and their supporters...
...B t in any case the President has acted contrary to a basic principle of American law, and has given new encouragement to law officials who want to win votes, or at least gain a prosecution edge over the defense, through headlines that damage the accused even before the trial begins...
...We agree with Secretary Wirtz...
...It is clear to me that these conditions have a depressing effect on the supply of domestic workers...
...It should have been left to the Department of Justice, or Hoover himself, to announce the simple facts of the arrests later, at a place removed from the President...
...Now that the workers have a courageous champion in the highest levels of government, their condition may at last take a turn for the better...
...For HUAC to preside over an inquiry into the Klan's offenses against both, is a witless and obscene joke, from which little good and much harm can come...
...While growers using braceros constitute only a small fraction of America's farmers, they are a powerful group—and they have powerful allies, ranging from the giant Bank of America and huge food processors, to the Southern Pacific and Union Pacific railroads...
...Repugnant as the Klan organizations are, the constitutional rights of their members should be fully protected in any inquiry—an unlikely prospect if the questioner is HUAC...
...Mrs...
...How the President meets the challenge of appointing a successor will provide a significant clue to whether Lyndon Johnson has become the President of all the people in this major field or whether he still feels the need to represent the special oil and gas interests for which he spoke as a Senator from Texas...
...Whether these representatives of the law engage in such "trial by headline" to oblige the press, or for their own political or personal advancement, the effect is to impair if not destroy the likelihood that the accused stands a fair trial based solely on evidence presented to the jury...
...Just as inevitably, prices of produce in the supermarket will also rise...
...The reappointment reflects a facet of Mr...
...Laws to Save Lives While the automobile industry is selling more cars than in any previous year, it is doing little to prevent the setting of another kind of record—new highs in deaths and injuries on the highways...
...It was the Illinois Senator who led the unsuccessful crusade of the oil, gas, and private power industries to block the reappointment of Ross...
...He should have said nothing that would implicate the men arrested for the murder, let alone make statements that clearly prejudged them as guilty...
...There are, however, some favorable signs on the political front...
...The President was fully justified in his anger at the crime...
...Experts had testified that new six-passenger cars with big trunks are tested for tire purposes with only three passengers and no luggage...
...That is why those, including the Warren Commission, who uphold the constitutional guarantee of due process deplored the public pronouncements made by Dallas officials about Lee Oswald when he was arrested after President Kennedy's murder...
...Some progress, however, has been made in increasing the efficiency of tax collection...
...and that many new cars are equipped with tires inadequate even for ordinary use, let alone the hazards of high-speed highway driving...
...Farm Workers' Champion Congress scuttled the farm bracero program last year, but many of the large growers stubbornly refused to accept the long-delayed decision to end the practice of importing cheap foreign farm labor...
...In recent years the Commission, under the chairmanship of Joseph C. Swidler, has greatly improved its regulatory procedures...
...The tranquility of Latin America today is deceptive...
...The nub of the question is that labor wage rates will inevitably climb now that the low-paid bracero has been removed from the competition for jobs...
...Last year, Detroit's indifference to producing safer cars and tires contributed heavily to the total of 47,000 deaths and nearly five million injuries on the nation's roads...
...It is not the American people as a whole who are eager to exploit the impoverished, politically-helpless migrant worker...
...The United States has spent $3.5 billion in Latin America during the past four years...
...Non-popular regimes such as those in Colombia, Argentina, and Brazil demonstrate that the oligarchies there can slow the pace of social reform to a crawl...
...Esther Peterson, the President's adviser for consumer affairs, Senator Nelson, and other members of Congress have received numerous complaints from the driving public about shoddy and unsafe tires...
...With this assistance tens of thousands of housing units and schoolrooms, thousands of miles of roads, and scores of hospitals have been built...
...Left-of-center, if not outright leftist governments, with broad popular support, are beginning to take affirmative action to implement the social goals of the Alliance...
...The lineup on the Commission, however, remains unchanged, with three supporters of strong regulation and two favoring a fairly relaxed performance...
...A sudden drop in prices on the world commodity market, for example, would wipe out the modest progress that has been achieved in economic growth during the past four years...
...So Mr...
...The efforts of Senator Nelson, as he has pointed out, are a matter of life and death, and his proposed legislation to establish safety standards for tires and cars should get early and favorable action in the Congress...
...The task of determining what Federal legislation is needed to protect the lives and liberties of civil rights workers and sympathizers against terrorism, where state and local police fail to do so, properly belongs with the House Judiciary Committee...
...The Alliance set out to raise per capita income by 2.5 per cent annually during the program's ten year life...
...There were three conscientious objectors involved in the decision...
...The transcript, Senator Nelson said, "indicates that untold thousands of persons are buying fine new cars, loading them up with children and baggage, and setting out across the country in the belief that they are safe...
...When—and if—the acute crisis in Southeast Asia eases, it is urgent that the President go to Latin America and see for himself what needs to be done...
...But the spectacle of the White House welcoming the tidings with gratification was truly cause for dismay...
...Now, the worst effect of its undertaking of the Klan investigation, especially with Administration blessing, is to give HUAC an undeserved aura of respectability and provide it with the opportunity to make headlines which will help it to obtain funds from the House for years to come...
...I think a great majority of Americans," Wirtz concluded, "would be willing to pay an additional quarter-cent a pound for celery to eliminate the working conditions we have seen, and three-quarters of a cent a head for lettuce to eliminate the living conditions in camps we saw...
...C. L. Wilkins, mother of one of the arrested men, wrote the President that she believed he had "branded" the four men guilty "over the nation on television...
...His proposed car safety improvements, including collapsible steering shafts, doors that will stay closed in a car crash, and shoulder harnesses, should be made mandatory for new cars by Federal law...
...Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, who with Senators Abraham Ribi-coff of Connecticut and Vance Hartke of Indiana has been leading a fight in Washington for automobile safety legislation, recently introduced a bill that would ban the sale of tires rated as unsafe, and set minimum safety and performance standards for all tires...
...But Wirtz, to his everlasting credit, has stood firm...
...But this implies that the Judiciary Committee does not have that immunity, a conclusion which is not only absurd, but which denigrates the Committee headed by Chairman Emanuel Celler of New York...
...The Congress, with some significant and vigorous dissents, generally supports the Administration in its approach...
...A week earlier Senator Nelson disclosed the shocking testimony given at a Federal Trade Commission inquiry into the tire industry...
...Yet progress in advancing the social goals of the Alliance has been disappointingly slow...
...New construction has been running at only two per cent of the 1,350,000 dwellings needed each year for new inhabitants and for replacement...
...One bases his belief on the ethical teachings of such philosophers as Plato, Aristotle, and Spinoza...
...HUAC has for years provided the smear material which Southern racists, including the Klan and similar groups, have used to inflame the ignorant against civil rights movements...
...Between 1960 and 1963, tax collections rose eleven per cent, an increase of some $288 million...
...Unless basic reforms are vigorously pushed now, so that the mass of the people can benefit from economic growth, it will probably be too late five years hence...
...The Secretary of Labor spent four sixteen-hour days, traveling 1,200 miles, in an intensive investigation of California's $3.5 billion farm industry...
...Eighteen Latin countries have already created such commissions...
...In painful contrast to the industrial sector, food production per capita has declined from the levels of ten years ago...
...A modest increase in total output of some 1.6 per cent annually has lagged behind a population growth of about 2.7 per cent each year...
...It is only a handful of greedy growers...
...Another positive accomplishment of the Alliance has been to foster the growth and to expand the role of national planning agencies...
...Further, the implication that the public—which has long felt deep revulsion against the Klan and similar groups—-would suspect the motives of a Klan inquiry conducted by the House Judiciary Committee is an insulting reflection not only on that Committee but on the judgment of the American people...
...A HUAC circus cannot produce the effective legislation against terrorism that would result from a House Judiciary Committee inquiry which pursued a genuine legislative purpose...
...With a working majority of members who genuinely believe in the philosophy of government regulation of monopoly industries, the FPC has brought about rate reductions resulting in refunds to consumers totaling $650 million, set other rate reductions worth billions of dollars in the future, and at the same time has both stabilized the industries under its jurisdiction and stimulated them to unprecedented expansion...
...But instead Mr...
...Only in higher education has substantial progress been recorded...
...At the conclusion of the tour, Wirtz stated bluntly, "The bracero program is over...
...This pessimistic picture is reinforced by the fourth annual report of the Social Progress Trust Fund, issued in March...
...Meanwhile, the Senator's safe tire law would be a major first step toward jolting Detroit into greater respect for the lives and limbs of auto purchasers and their families...
...All had been convicted in lower courts of violations of the draft law...
...The Trust Fund, an agency of the Inter-American Development Bank with some $525 million at its disposal, frankly admits that in most of those fields in which it operates—land settlement and improved land use, housing for low income groups, water supply and sanitation facilities—the results of the Alliance to date have been meager...
...four tires supposedly of the same size may vary surprisingly...
...But a short distance away in space, if a light-year in spirit, the U.S...
...Another believes in "some power manifest in nature which helps man in the ordering of his life...
...The Administration, it is reported, felt that HUAC, with five Southerners, including Chairman Edwin E. Willis of Louisiana, among its nine members, and with its long anti-Communist record, could investigate the Klan and propose corrective legislation while remaining immune to charges of leftist influence...
...The Committee is an ancient foe of civil rights and the Constitution...
...New legislation designed to break the monopoly of the large land owners has been adopted in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, and Peru...
...They refused, that is, until the recent inspection of California agriculture by Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz...
...Probably only I. F. Stone, the perceptive Washington observer, could have tied the Court's various commentaries together in his conclusion that "this Supreme Court opinion, circulated in predominantly Buddhist South Vietnam, may help to demonstrate that we Americans are not all savage dispensers of napalm...
...This notorious Committee should have been abolished long ago...
...Growers must now compete in the marketplace with other elements of the nation's economy for their workers...
...The tire size stamped on the tire does not always give the actual size...
...But Wirtz has estimated that if wage rates rose a full fifty per cent, the increase of prices at the retail level would be measured in only fractions of a cent...
...The third believes in nothing more closely defined than "an ultimate cause...
...Both as a matter of principle and for the purpose of producing any needed legislation in the most effective form and in the shortest time, the Klan inquiry should have been kept out of HUAC's hands...
...Within the last year such regimes have taken office in Venezuela, Peru, and Chile...
...But their absence in Colombia, Brazil, and Argentina is disturbing...
...The auto makers are a dominant influence in tire manufacturing, and bear heavy responsibility for the chaotic and dangerous situation in the manufacture and sale of tires...
...Justice William O. Douglas, in a concurring opinion, made some astringent remarks that combined the politics of time with the politics of eternity...
...The cost of living has risen forty-five per cent, unemployment has climbed to ten per cent, foreign investment has declined precipitously, and the agrarian reform law is dead...
...Wirtz found living conditions among migrant workers appalling...
...Johnson conducted what was, in effect, a public trial...
...Johnson has struck one blow for strong consumer protection, and then nullified it with a counterblow against such protection...
...Notes in the News Trial by President Too many district attorneys, police officers, and other law-enforcement officials have a deplorable predilection for issuing sweeping statements about persons under arrest...
...For the first time, the nations of the southern part of the hemisphere are beginning to allocate scarce resources according to a master plan designed to promote economic growth...
...Less bleak is the fact that since 1961, new water and sanitation systems have reached forty per cent of the Alliance's objective, which is to supply 105 million additional people with potable water by 1971...
...He demanded that the 800-page FTC transcript be made public even if Congress had to provide funds to furnish copies to the press and interested groups...
...Some modest achievements have been recorded in tax reform, but the rich are not yet paying anywhere near their fair share of the tax burden...
...Detroit knows how to build far safer cars and equip them with reliable tires, but, as the industry sees it, safety does not sell cars...
...I always thought," she observed, "a person was innocent of a crime until proven guilty by a court of law...
...Without dynamic, democratically-elected, and reformist regimes of the type that now exist in Venezuela, Peru, and Chile, the necessary reforms in taxation, land distribution, public housing, and public sanitation simply cannot be undertaken...
...Progress in land reform is slim indeed...
...It was the Court's unanimous decision that all three were justified in refusing service under the Universal Military Training Act, however unconventional their religious beliefs might be...
...Even liberal California Governor Edmund G. Brown was persuaded to back the growers...
...The Court, in a landmark decision that bears deeply on the relations between state and religion, has determined that citizens whose refusal to take human life does not spring from a belief in a supreme being are nevertheless protected by the Constitution in their stand...
Vol. 29 • May 1965 • No. 5
