Scalawag?

South Carolina's Democratic Senator Olin D. Johnston was alarmed by the efforts of Businessman William A. Kimbel to renovate South Carolina's Republican Party. When Kimbel, leader of the South Carolina drive for Eisenhower in 1952, was named U.S. representative to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe last February, Johnston saw a chance to cause some embarrassment. He succeeded. The fact that it was mainly the U.S. that was embarrassed made little difference to Olin Dewitt Johnston.

Johnston set out to block Kimbel's confirmation in the Senate. He named nine persons who "desired" to testify against the nomination. Most of the anxious witnesses were members of South Carolina's stagnant old Republican organization which Kimbel has been trying to clean up. But despite three telegrams apiece from the Foreign Relations Committee, all nine failed to appear.

Olin Johnston did not give up. Cried he: "I'm standing firm until I can fully investigate Kimbel. I don't know him personally, but I understand he's a carpetbagger . . . I don't guess the world will go to pieces if Mr. Kimbel isn't confirmed in time to serve."

The carpetbagger reference was unfortunate--for Johnston. Kimbel, who was born in New York City, is public relations director for the Myrtle Beach, S.C. division of a Massachusetts corporation; he has helped to bring other industries into the state. Said the Charleston News & Courier: "'Carpetbagger' carries a meaning of hatred left over from Reconstruction when Northern villains picked the bones of the defeated Confederacy.

Since then the South has become a land of promise. States are spending taxpayers' money to attract Northern capital. The welcome mat is out and the hand of friendship extended--but not by Senator Johnston." Then the paper took unkind notice of Johnston's New and Fair Deal tendencies and his loud support of Adlai Stevenson. Said the editorial: "There was another term of abuse in Reconstruction. It was 'scalawag,' meaning a Southerner who played along with Washington policies then oppressing the South." -Still, Olin Johnston had his way in the end. In Geneva, still unconfirmed in office, William Kimbel was forced to stay in the background while second-level negotiators represented the U.S. on the Commission; the U.S. was not permitted to put its best foot forward in the year's most important economic meetings with Russia. Into the State Department wire room in Washington one morning last week came a cable from Kimbel reporting that the Economic Commission had finished the major part of its work. One hour later the State Department wired back to Kimbel--telling him the Senate had just confirmed his nomination.

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