The Charlotte News

Monday, February 3, 1958

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Cape Canaveral, Fla., that it had been reliably and widely reported this date that an early launching of a basketball-sized satellite would be tried with the Vanguard missile, that one Vanguard test vehicle was being prepared for launching with a 6.4-inch, 3.5 pound grapefruit size satellite in its nosecone—thus the origin of the question, no doubt, as to whether the grapefruit of paradise gets up your nose. The Navy had planned to launch at least two more experimental miniature satellites before moving to the larger, fully instrumented satellite. But recently the impression had solidified among persons in touch with Vanguard personnel that the forthcoming launch would be the last with the small-sized satellites. Those reports indicated that particularly if the small-satellite launching was successful, the next Vanguard attempt, probably to come in March, would carry a 21.5 pound, 20-inch satellite. Such an effort, however, was against the better judgment of some of the most experienced scientists involved in missile work at the Cape, believing that such a crash program would not work in such a sophisticated scientific effort. They argued that the only purpose in hurrying the Navy program was for propaganda purposes, and one missile expert stated that if a propaganda weapon was what the people in Washington wanted, they should have gone ahead long earlier with the Army Jupiter-C development, or the Navy should have taken the old Viking rocket and gone ahead with it, that they could have done so before the Russians long earlier. To observers at the Cape, it was evident that the Vanguard workers, many of them young scientists only a few years out of college, were under heavy strain both because of large workloads and because of worry.

In Brussels, Belgium, it was reported that Russian reports on its two Sputniks had arrived at the International Geophysical Year headquarters this date, but that Secretary General Marcel Nicolet had said that they contained "nothing new".

In Moscow, it was reported that the Soviet Government had notified the President officially that it would discuss fully the control of outer space as part of a package deal, including the abolition of nuclear weapons and the reduction of armed forces. Premier Nikolai Bulganin, in a communication delivered the previous day in Washington, had said that the Soviet Union accepted the idea of preparing for a summit conference through normal diplomatic channels but ruled out any prior foreign ministers conference because of Soviet opposition to Secretary of State Dulles. Premier Bulganin, replying to the President's January 12 letter, proposed a nine-point agenda for a summit meeting between Eastern and Western leaders. The Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman told a press conference this date that the Soviet Government was ready to participate in a summit meeting based on either broad or restricted representation. The nine points included immediate suspension of atomic and hydrogen bomb tests, renunciation by the Soviet Union, the U.S. and Britain of the use of nuclear weapons, establishment of an atom-free zone in Central Europe (which sounds as total annihilation), conclusion of a nonaggression pact between the signatories of the Warsaw and NATO pacts, reduction of foreign troops in Germany and other European countries, an agreement on the prevention of a sudden attack, discussion of measures to broaden international trade ties, end of the propaganda war, and consideration of the problems of easing tension in the Near and Middle East.

Secretary of State Dulles and Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson opened this date a survey of U.S.-Soviet relations and of chances for holding an East-West summit conference later in the year.

In Bonn, West Germany stood adamant this date in its refusal to pay in the future for support of allied troops in that country.

In Vienna, the Austrian Catholic Press Service reported this date that between 450 and 500 Catholic priests and monks were being held in prisons and concentration camps in Czechoslovakia.

In Chicago, it was reported that the traffic death toll in 1957 had been 38,500, a 3 percent decrease from 1956, marking the lowest mileage death rate in history. The 1957 record was, according to the National Safety Council, "encouraging", reflecting improvement in traffic behavior and enforcement. Traffic deaths had numbered 39,628 in 1956, one of the highest on record. The 1,100 fewer deaths in the prior year had been the second largest reported in any year since the end of World War II, surpassed only by a decrease of approximately 2,400 deaths in 1954. The mileage death rate the previous year per 100 million vehicle miles was 5.9, compared with the previous all-time low of 6.3 in 1956 and 1954. The Council said that every month of 1957, except August, had shown a drop or no change in traffic fatalities from the same month in 1956. The Council said that one year did not make an era of safer traffic, but could be the turning point in the war on traffic accidents, and indicated that it was significant that the improvement occurred in the face of a 4 percent rise in motor vehicle travel. Traffic deaths in December had totaled 3,710, a 4 percent decrease from the 3,858 lives lost in December, 1956. The all-time high traffic death toll was 39,969 in 1941. (And we remember, or should, the strangely forecasting Herblock cartoon, ominously coincidental with the number of deaths recorded officially at Pearl Harbor 3 1/2 months after that cartoon appeared in the newspapers on August 18.) The Council commended governors, mayors and traffic enforcement agencies for the 1957 record, and also commended drivers and pedestrians who had made the improvement possible.

In Haifa, an Israeli police launch had brought a 150-ton Syrian fishing boat and its crew of seven into Haifa Harbor this date, but a police spokesman said that they probably would be released soon.

Five of the seven members of the FCC had been summoned this date before a House subcommittee to reply to allegations of misconduct, as reported further below by Drew Pearson.

Near Paducah, Ky., it was reported that a woman had been shot to death at a roadblock this date as officers spread a new dragnet for an escaped gunman after his companion had attempted suicide and a kidnaped Missouri State trooper had been returned unharmed. Kentucky, Illinois and Missouri officers joined in the new search for the gunman, a 24-year old man of Redwood City, Calif., after a 30-hour search for the abducted trooper. The roadblock shooting victim was a 24-year old woman from Paducah. A Missouri trooper reported that she had been shot by a civilian of Fulton—where the Truman Doctrine and the policy of containment actually had their origin out of the speech by Winston Churchill in 1946—, who was sitting in the Missouri trooper's police cruiser. The trooper said that a car driven by the victim's brother had run through the roadblock and then stopped. He said that when he approached the car, the driver started to speed away and then the civilian picked up a rifle and fired, hitting the woman in the side.

In Chapel Hill, it was reported that a youth who told officers he had experienced uncontrollable urges to set fires and who had admitted starting ten fires since January 8, had been committed to the State Hospital in Raleigh for observation. The 31-year old man of McCain had been taken to the mental hospital on Saturday night under an order signed by a Superior Court judge, with the period of observation not to exceed 60 days. The man had been given a preliminary hearing in Recorder's Court on a charge of arson and breaking and entering, with that judge having ordered him held without bond on the arson count. A police captain said that the man admitted that he set ten fires and attempted to start two others since January 8, the biggest of the fires having occurred on the night of January 9, causing an estimated $60,000 damage to Swain Hall on the campus, the location of the WUNC-TV studios. That same night, five other fires, all minor, had broken out in University-owned buildings, including three at the Carolina Inn, located diagonally across from Swain. The man had been met by his adoptive parents as he entered the courtroom on Saturday, where he sobbed and collapsed. His mother said that he did not know what he was doing. He was a first year medical student at UNC and officials said that he had a good scholastic record. His attorney said that his only previous police record had been a speeding charge. Police had arrested him on Friday night in his dormitory room after receiving information from Mrs. W. D. Carmichael, Jr., wife of the vice-president of the Consolidated University. The piece does not indicate what that information was. Maybe he did not like UNC basketball and was upset at the broadvision broadcasts of some home games without sound, reliant on radio to provide the play-by-play via Ray Reeve, thought perhaps that educational television ought confine itself to education and not venture into recreation as there were plentiful outlets for that on commercial television. Or, maybe he liked basketball and was frustrated at the broadvision concept because his radio was broken or missing a tube or two.

In Morehead City, N.C., five days had passed without report of disc jockey Melvin West, who had departed on a 620-mile sea voyage to Bermuda in an outboard motorboat.

Something is very odd about this front page, as at least parts of it suspiciously appear to be from earlier in January, insofar as the news being reported, though it is not a duplicate of any prior front page. Both the firebug story and the preceding story had been reported in January. Someone appears not to be minding the printing press very well. Who knows where it all fits? Maybe the teletype machine got stuck and started regurgitating old news. Maybe it had something to do with Groundhog Day. It is just as well, as the horror stories out of Nebraska were becoming quite tiresome. By the way, Charles Starkweather did not resemble James Dean, but rather, insofar as Hollywood imagery, appeared to be this character in transition. Perhaps, had he played his cards right, rather than trying to fulfill his ambition of becoming an outlaw, he might have landed a role as Littler Little Joe on the Cartwright ranch eventually, as long as he did not try to murder everybody on set when they crossed him. It is good that this program did not air the Sunday night of the prior week or one might start to think that it might have inspired Charles in part in the commission of one of his more brutal murders during his rampage. But it was aired the previous night, after the fact. Also on the bill of fare for the previous night was this somewhat idiosyncratic view of wild, murderous, small-town southern Kansas in the days after the Kansas-Nebraska Act, probably not far, in this instance, from Dodge City, the competition on Saturday nights, seeking obviously to present a more realistic side to the cowboy image bred of too many John Ford Westerns and B-Western imitations at the movies through the years preceding, saturating the still forming minds of a slightly older generation of children than those now watching in 1958, breeding in turn, in modern times, from the not-too-swift among those older ones the Charles Starkweathers who wanted to emulate the wilder of the restive, peripatetic, unsettled breed, congregating toward Klannish Kultur, seeking adventure in the unsettled West, later manifesting themselves in the form of the little Charlie Mansons from the same generation of early Western cultists and comic-book immersives, also a short, little fellow, even a couple of inches shorter than short, eventually roasted Chuck of Lincoln. There is nothing wrong with being short, of course, as with some of our better athletes at times, including Little Joe while at USC, where they held him down one day and cut his Samsonesque hair, even if often stereotypically portrayed negatively, as were the more intelligent, regardless of build, of the little, dusty wayside stage-stop towns, in the movies and tv presentations of the tough Old West, seeking to appeal to the not-too-bright bulbs in the little wayside towns across modernity, to bring the plentiful trade out of the dusty roads and byways into the always suspect moompicter houses, where the heroes always stood tall in the saddle as the raw, independent, self-made men and ladies, even if ladies primarily of the evening hours, church-going, if at all, only to mourn the too-slow draw of their most recent date, without much book-learning getting in the way of what was loosely called "common sense", like Marshal Dillon, as long as one does not feel the need to compensate for either the shortness of stature or book-learning or just plain sense of any type, by wearing or carrying a big gun or knife, like Chuck and Charlie, the latter having stood about five feet, three inches, if that. He was definitely not five feet, seven, as some erroneously report on the internet. But it is not to disparage those who are thus small in stature, as we do not live by the code of the Old West and, as the saying often proves true in reality, the bigger they come, the more clumsily put together piece by piece, and thus the farther and further they trip when stumbled, as anyone knows who has ever played tackle football wearing all of the proper equipment.

John Kilgo of The News reports that two of five men who escaped from the Mecklenburg County jail after slugging and threatening the life of the night jailer had been caught during the morning in Columbia, S.C., driving a stolen car. The two escapees, ages 17 and 19, had been arrested driving a 1953 Mercury. Police said that the three other escapees, one a six-time escapee considered extremely dangerous, were still on the loose. They ranged in ages between 21 and 42.

With the winter's heaviest snow afoot in the western part of the state, WMIT FM radio station, located on Clingman's Dome on Mt. Mitchell, highest point east of the Mississippi, which supplied the Muzak for commercial outlets in the state, had gone off the air again at 8:30 this morning because of 20 inches of snow and ice freezing the transmitter yet again, after it had thawed out following a shutdown the previous week. Those stuck in elevators by the snow pack will have to suffice in silent contemplation or convivial conversation with their fellow stuckees, if any.

In Sacramento, it was announced that the San Simeon Castle and Estate, where the late newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst had once lived in palatial splendor, probably would be opened to the public by mid-May, with an expected admission price of two dollars for adults and one dollar for children between the ages of 6 and 12. The recommendations for operating the State's newly acquired historical site would be presented the following month to the park commission. San Simeon is located 95 miles south of Monterey along the California coast. Admission today is probably a little more, likely free for aspiring gold-digger singers. It's good for a few laughs, as with the Biltmore Estate in Asheville.

On the editorial page, "Charlotte Must Treat the Whole Wound" finds that the presentation of Charlotte's "workable program" for urban renewal to the U.S. Housing and Home Finance Agency represented significant progress in an humanitarian crusade.

The Administration of Charlotte Mayor James Smith had assembled with speed and efficiency the necessary data and documents to make the presentation, but the greater test of good faith would come later when the city specified the slum area which would be redeveloped.

The city had large blighted areas within the heart of the city and the spreading deterioration created economic and social chaos. If the city were timidly to select only a block or two for action, it would accomplish little. Urban blight was a kind of cancer, such that the whole condition had to be treated for effective results. It would require large plans and great courage, thinking as great as the problem itself.

A slum was nothing but subsidized misery, a social liability breeding crime, disease and unhappiness. To the city, it was also a financial liability since it consumed large volumes of municipal services and returned little revenue to the City treasury.

In January, 1957, the staff of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission had summarized the challenge and the opportunity of urban renewal by indicating: "The typical slum is located close to the heart of the city between the downtown area and substantial residential neighborhoods beyond. In a rapidly growing community, this is exactly the area where community growth brings new opportunities and problems to the city. The growing community requires new space for retail business expansion at its center. New wholesaling and distribution firms would have here the advantage of a location central to the metropolitan area they serve. New business services and offices related to the growing downtown center would find advantage in these inner locations. The ever increasing numbers of single people who come to the city to work in the stores and offices might find this area a convenient place to live, close to work, restaurants, theaters, shopping and all the other downtown services, provided modern housing in well-planned neighborhoods is available. These are some of the possibilities for the rebirth of these worn out inner areas—new housing, new stores, new offices or new factories to improve living conditions, to create new employment opportunities, to bring new investments into old areas, to add new values to the tax base of the community."

It concludes that urban renewal could help Charlotte realize the full promise of those possibilities if it tackled the whole problem with courage, determination and positive action, that the objectives could be realistic and that the tools were at hand. "Only if Charlotte remains content to jog along without aggressive action will decay take its toll."

Get rid of all them black shacks down by the railroad tracks.

"Cultural Exchange: Subtle Significance" finds that there was promise in the limited cultural exchange recently agreed upon between the U.S. and Russia, that such an exchange was quite desirable for reasons which were somewhat subtle.

No one was likely to be converted to a political ideology by music, drama, painting or the dance. U.S. audiences who had listened in awe a few years earlier to Russia's Emil Gilels, pianist, and David Oistrakh, violinist, had not been converted to Bolshevism any more than Moscow audiences who had later cheered for "Porgy and Bess" had been converted to Western democracy.

But both Russians and Americans had come away from the performances refreshed with the idea that, although governments could distort social and cultural values, people were very much alike everywhere. Cultural exchange would demonstrate to Russians that Americans were not really the cultural barbarians which Communist propagandists accused them of being, and Americans would realize that Russian artists, if not their statesmen, were capable of some of the nobler expressions of essential goodness. The result would be common ground for mutual appreciation of values which transcended mere political considerations. Only good could come out of such an exchange.

It concludes that cultural diplomacy had been an art which the U.S. had neglected for too long and that there was much to learn about its importance and power.

"A Church Is a Church Is a Church" tells of Philadelphia's Dr. Alton Lowe having criticized in Charlotte recently "functional" designs in church architecture. It indicates that it was what they had said about the early Gothic during the middle ages and early church architecture accepted at present for its "symbolic" beauty had been more functional than many realized.

A. Hamilton Thompson, the former president of Britain's Royal Archaeological Institute and author of The Cathedral Churches of England, had written: "It is often stated that church architecture of the middle ages was dictated by an elaborate scheme of religious symbolism. While symbolical ideas entered into the adoption of certain types of plan, as in the transference … of the mausoleum plan to the baptistery, experience shows that the lay masons who usually carried out the work of building were guided by practical considerations, structural and ritual, whose free and natural expression would have been fettered by adherence to artificial rules of symbolism."

It concludes that free and natural expression continued to produce beauty in church design without robbing the structure of its essential purpose, which was the greatest symbol of all.

A piece from the New York Herald Tribune, titled "Deus Ex Machina?" provides some dialogue from R.U.R, the play by Karel Capek about the re-population of the world by artificial beings which amused Broadway 25 years earlier.

But in 1958, things were not so fantastic as they had once seemed. A young Harvard medical student had been experimenting with an IBM scientific computer and had discovered that the machine had the capacity to learn and exercise judgment in the handling of mathematical problems. The student, R. M. Friedberg, said that the goal was to get a machine to do something without being told exactly how it had to be done. If a machine which could store knowledge and learn from experience in any field of thought should be developed, the question was how it was to differ from men.

In the play, the robots were doomed because they lacked a soul and ability to live, could not mate and reproduce. It is only when robots could feel for one another and reproduce that the world would be saved.

It suggests that machines would likely one day be able to produce themselves mechanically and excel man in the performance of intellectual tasks, as they had in physical tasks. The question remained, however, whether they could know love, hate, guilt, pride, honesty or generosity, and whether there could be such a thing as a mechanical God.

Perhaps, that was the problem in Nebraska, that they were both robots, formed unwittingly from too much uncritical tv watching and comic book consumption. It can be murder on the benumbed mind.

Drew Pearson indicates that public pressure on the Moulder Committee had been so great that it was now starting a superficial probe of the FCC scandals it had been supposed to investigate in the first place but had ducked the previous week. The present secret strategy was to make FCC chairman John Doerfer the chief scapegoat and skirt gingerly around most of the other finagling and influence peddling in both the Commission and other independent agencies.

Congressman Oren Harris of Arkansas had tried to steer the Committee away from any thorough probe in the first place, but had now come around to support a brief probe. He was a friend of the big utilities, the gas companies, and Pan American Airways, and had received a 25 percent block of stock in station KRBB-TV of El Dorado, Ark., for only $5,000, when it was worth three times that amount. The fact that he had accepted that stock at a time when he was in a position to use his influence with the FCC to secure increased power for the station, had placed him in the same position as some of the Eisenhower appointees, fired for conflicts of interest. It could be why Mr. Harris, one year late, had announced that he would sell the stock.

Though Congressman Morgan Moulder of Missouri was chairman of the subcommittee, Mr. Harris, as chairman of the parent committee, had constantly hounded, overruled and ridden herd on Mr. Moulder, showing such brazen determination to usurp the functions of Mr. Moulder that it had become the talk of Congress. Mr. Harris had jealously retained for himself the power to issue subpoenas, even had taken the right to act as Committee spokesman. The previous week, at the secret session, Representative John Bennett of Michigan, a Republican, had proposed that Mr. Harris act as spokesman and report to the press what happened at the meeting, though that proposal was voted down. Nevertheless, Mr. Harris held a press conference and acted as spokesman anyway.

Mr. Pearson notes that Mr. Harris had convinced Congressional observers that reports of a natural gas deal were true. The deal had been rumored around the cloakrooms for some time, indicating a deal whereby the Republicans would switch enough Northern votes to Mr. Harris to pass his natural gas bill, while Mr. Harris would not investigate some of the highly embarrassing White House influence peddlers within the independent agencies.

House Speaker Sam Rayburn was due to receive one of the most glamorous movie actresses in Europe or the U.S., Gina Lollobrigida, this date and if he got his courage up, to present her with a gavel made from an elm tree which grew in front of the Capitol at the time of George Washington. Ms. Lollobrigida was celebrating the opening of her new movie, "Beautiful but Dangerous", in Washington during the week. The Speaker, who had a lot of experience with glamour in his many years in the position, probably would be equal to the occasion, as he had dealt with such famous women as the Queen of Rumania, the Queen Mother of England, the present Queen of England and the blonde queen of Texas, Jayne Mansfield, even though the latter had been born in Pennsylvania.

Marquis Childs tells of the Democrats planning a national rally for former President Truman on the night of February 22, Washington's birthday, through which they hoped to raise $300,000 for their long-depleted treasury. One of the national networks had already volunteered free time to cover the former President's speech, for which he was said to be preparing.

As the popularity of the Eisenhower Administration had dropped, the tendency had been at the same time to revise upward the reputation of former President Truman. His admirers who had stuck with him believed that he was on his way to being rehabilitated in public opinion. That was the primary reason for the dinner in his honor. There was also the fact that Missouri was the only state outside of the Deep South which had voted for the Democrats in 1956. It was also a reflection of the near-record majority for re-election of Senator Thomas Hennings. Governor James Blair of Missouri would introduce Mr. Truman at the dinner.

Dean Acheson, former Secretary of State in the Truman Administration, was under an attack as virulent as that which had been directed at the former President, and he, also, was moving back into the news, as his views as chairman of the foreign policy committee of the Democratic Advisory Council had recently been given prominence while his book, Power and Diplomacy, had been widely discussed.

Some critics of former Secretary Acheson had accused him of being as rigid in his approach to foreign policy as Secretary Dulles. In a recent public statement, Mr. Acheson had agreed with the Dulles view that a summit meeting with the Russians would be futile or worse, while at the same time, placing blame for the country's present position partly on the Eisenhower Administration and partly on the Soviets. At around the same time, Mr. Acheson had attacked his former associate in the State Department, George Kennan, for suggesting in his lectures in London for the BBC that withdrawal of foreign troops from a zone in Central Europe might be a step toward disarmament and the easing of world tensions. He had called Mr. Kennan "Messianic" and uninformed, disturbing many of the former Secretary's admirers who believed it was needlessly intemperate.

To those who viewed the matter more objectively, the question was whether, with the revival of Mr. Truman and Mr. Acheson, it might not seem that the Democrats were proposing to restore the past, and whether, for instance, Mr. Acheson's containment policy would suffice in an infinitely more complicated and dangerous present world. They were asking where the new ideas and new and younger leaders were to chart a new course in the nuclear missile age.

Mr. Childs suggests that it was one of the ironies that Mr. Dulles, as his close associates had let it be known, had written a letter to Mr. Acheson expressing his praise for the latter's views on a summit meeting and the danger of a neutralist Germany. In view of the fierce Republican hostility toward Mr. Acheson less than six years earlier, it was comparable to squaring a circle or bringing together two parallel lines.

At the big gala on February 22, the Democrats would not lack for faces eagerly advertised as new. The ratio of presidential candidates among the expected 3,500 diners paying $100 per plate at the Sheraton-Park Hotel might not be as high as half and half, but it would be high. A number of Democratic governors had accepted, including Robert Meyner of New Jersey, G. Mennen Williams of Michigan, Averell Harriman of New York, and Herschel Loveless of Iowa. Only one Southern governor, Luther Hodges of North Carolina, had accepted thus far, but despite Little Rock and the civil rights fight of the previous year, the Democrats in 1958 were confident and professed less concern over the North-South split, running against an Administration in a jam, for the time being, enough.

Doris Fleeson indicates that within a few hours after Senator Lister Hill had sponsored his comprehensive aid to education bill, 26 of his colleagues had joined with him. The bill proposed spending three billion dollars in six years for education at all levels and teaching facilities. The Administration had proposed to spend one billion in four years to improve teaching and help science students.

Senator Hill was chairman of the Labor and Education Committee and the accepted leader of the Democratic majority on that issue. Two Republicans had also signed on, Senators William Langer of North Dakota and Irving Ives of New York, the latter being the second-ranking Republican on the Labor and Education Committee and, if re-elected the following fall, would become its top ranking Republican with the retirement of Senator Alexander Smith of New Jersey.

The support by Senator Ives also gave Senator Hill an apparent majority on the committee. Of its six Democrats, five had agreed to sponsor the bill and a Democratic vacancy caused by the recent death of Senator Matthew Neely of West Virginia was to be filled by Senator Ralph Yarborough of Texas, who had already joined the legislation. The bill would thus have seven members as sponsors on a 13-member committee.

The outlook for an education bill in the House had been clouded by the expressed pessimism of Speaker Sam Rayburn and Republican leader Joseph Martin. Representative Carl Elliott of Alabama, the fifth-ranking Democrat on the House Education and Labor Committee, was its sponsor in that chamber.

HEW was also pessimistic, finding that the competition in ideas and amounts doomed any bill, that the hope was for the rival schools of thought to arrive at a modest compromise. But Senator Hill disagreed, pointing out that the big stumbling block at the current point was not money but the sincerely felt fear on the part of many that Federal help meant Federal control, and he believed that members of Congress who did not want to move in that area would oppose a small bill as quickly as they would a large one. He believed the situation demanded a grand design, that a program concentrated only on scholarships would mean only that holders of scholarships would apply to schools which, for lack of teachers and facilities, had to turn them away.

Senator Hill was already holding hearings on the broad subject of science and education. Two eminent scientists, Dr. Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb, and Wernher von Braun, the rocket expert, had testified somberly that "national survival" depended first of all on an expanded and improved education.

A stumbling block in any education bill was always the question of segregation. The Hill bill was so framed that the issue was avoided, and the Senator had the promise of Northern colleagues that they would not inject it into the bill. The President had also taken the attitude that segregation ought be separated from education legislation.

Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain, says that he had just taken a couple of pills, one to calm him down and one to uncalm him against the day, that he needed something else in capsule form which would perform neither task, believes he would eventually revert to sulphur and molasses. He says that Macy's had a new pill which, according to an advertisement, was "good for nothing except laughs." The pills had a sticker which read: "Relief from curious nurses, nosy M.D.'s, and unlimited regulations."

He said he had taken a look at his medicine chest recently and had never seen so many nasty nostrums in all his days. "Stone the crows, we got pills around in a quantity that would bankrupt an old-time apothecary. I never took a pill until I was thirty-ish, but now it seems you got to have 'em to stay alive. I often wonder how Grandpa made it on a steady diet of cornpone and fatback."

He indicates that people in their "Frustrated Fifties" appeared to like to think that they were sick, when it had only been brought on by a Welsh rabbit at 2:00 a.m. As for drunks, he had met only one recently whom he admired, of whom someone had asked why he was always drunk, to which he had replied, "Whiskey, I like it."

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