Father Vidrine shares old issues of The Times Picayune

Father Richard Vidrine recently shared with us old issues of The Times Picayune from 1948. Highlighted here are some of the major stories featured in these old issues.
Atomic Bomb
National defense seemed to be an important consideration in the years following the end of World War II and 1949, when the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb.
According to the April 12, 1948, issue of The Times Picayune, an organization named The Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, aware of the Soviet Union’s intention, warned of “the total collapse of our traditional civilization.”
The committee warned that with the “collapse of the UN atomic energy commission discussions on international control, one of the most fateful events in history has passed almost unnoticed.”
The committee advised it had “a special position in the tragic situation in which mankind exists today. It is through the works of the scientific community that this great menace (the atomic bomb) has come upon humanity and now threatens to destroy civilization.”
The article said the scientists speculated that without a world government, there would be a “preventive war,” apparently to prevent the Soviet Union from acquiring the atomic bomb, or a “two-bloc world with ‘eventual termination in war.’”
The same edition of the New Orleans newspaper speculated about the future of the U.S. armed forces, in a report about comments made by Wyoming Republican Senator Edward V. Robertson, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The article stated a “big expansion of air power will be approved quickly.” Exactly what those expanded forces would do isn’t mentioned in the article, but delivery of atomic bombs would have been a good bet.
On May 5, 1948, The Times Picayune ran an editorial about “Communist claims that Soviet Russia now has a jet plane which flies at the ‘speed of sound.’” That was a few months after Chuck Yeager unofficially broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1, and days after the officially monitored achievement of supersonic flight on April 26, 1948.
The column implied that Congress lagged behind popular sentiment about the need to boost national security. “If the members of Congress are stirred by Communist claims of superiority in the air, that is good news to the country, whose persevering appeals for defense legislation still await response. On that question Congress has a strongly affirmative answer from the American majority -- an answer repeated and emphasized on many occasions. For the long delay of action Congress alone is responsible. Will it now at last speed the actual enactment of adequate defense legislation the international situation requires and the country has been asking so long?”
Fears of atomic bombs accelerated after the Soviet Union became the second nation to successfully test an atomic bomb in late August 1949.
A year later, the U.S. government released warnings about what to do if an atomic bomb goes off nearby, as reported on August 17, 1950, by The Gazette here in Ville Platte.
“You’ll know an A-bomb has exploded by the sudden flood of the light of 100 suns. You must not look at the light.”
The article went on to explain the closer a person is to the blast, the more danger it will pose.
Reflecting the greater emphasis on air power in The Times Picayune in April 1948, The Gazette story about what to do in case of an atomic bomb attack reported, “Military experience is that even under the best defense conditions, at least 25 per cent of the enemy’s planes will get through.”
Railroad Strike
The May 5, 1949, issue of The Times Picayune had a story at the top of the front page with the headline, “U.S. RAIL SEIZURE NEARS AS PAY TALKS COLLAPSE.”
The story began, “Federal seizure of the nation’s railroads became a possibility tonight” after the talks collapsed. The railroad unions issued strike instructions that stated troop, hospital and milk trains “when and if the strike takes place,” would continue to run.
Threats of a railroad workers strike continued past the beginning of the Korean War in June 1950. In July of that year, President Harry S. Truman formed, by executive order, an emergency board tasked with reaching an agreement between the railroad unions and owners.
The unions refused to accept the board’s proposals on August 25, 1950. Two days later, Truman ordered the U.S. Army be put in control of the nation’s railroads.