_ .OREGON _ _
daily emerald
World News & Sports
Supplement
Vol. 75 No. 9
Monday, July 16, 1973
|*ny m‘ HHw mirk
Mobile health fair comes
to poor people in Oregon
Bv PATRICIA McCORMACK
NEW YORK (UPI) — Today millions of
parents did the automatic thing they do
every day for their offspring. They put out
their vitamin pills. Sometime before
school starts, they’ll take them to the
doctor for their annual physical. To the
dentist for their annual checkup. To the
eye doctor for a vision examination.
If at some point around the calendar one
of the children starts to limp, complains of
muscle cramps, runs a fever or displays
any abnormal physiological or
psychological thing, they’ll call for help.
Lots «_r places within these United
States, however, families are too poor to
call a doctor or see a dentist. Maybe no
expert is near. The family doesn’t have a
car or a way to get to a doctor far away.
The family cannot afford the automatic
health maintenance things either —
vitamin pills, annual exams of eyes, teeth,
entire body and all its vital systems. In
extreme cases such neglect can be
responsible for tiny teeth rotted to the
gumline. It can be linked to preventable
blindness. Tragic extreme cases occur in
places where there’s little or no dental and
medical action. Poor, out of the way towns
and hamlets.
The Rev. Williams Miller, director of
Voluntary Services of the United
Presbyterian Church, back in 1966 was
touched by the high price of such neglect.
He came up with the idea of mobile
health fairs, manned by volunteers, for
visits to the neglected communities. Five
health fair teams will be roaming from
small place to small place this summer.
The major areas to be covered are in New
Mexico-Colorado, Oklahoma-Arkansas,
Ohio, New York State, and Oregon.
The health fairs will be stopping at
remote places such as Detroit, Ore.;
Canjilon, N. Mex.; Gamer-Walsenburg,
Colo,; Hartford, Ark., and a lot of other
places you never knew existed. (Detroit is
52 miles southeast of Salem on Route 22.)
The health education messages carried
by the health fair teams are delivered in
modem day medical Show style. There is a
carnival atmosphere, maybe a per
formance by a guitar-strumming gospel
quartet or local country music combo.
The event that draws the people always
is planned with the help of leaders in the
local community. Sometimes it is a
covered-dish supper. There are balloons
and other goodies for the children.
According to Rev. Miller, a makeshift
dental chair is set up under a shade tree or
down by the railroad tracks, if that hap
pens to be handiest. An eye exam is given
in a church basement.
The teams give out free literature —
either from the established voluntary
health associations or adapted for the
remote-place audience by the church’s
health volunteers.
Rev. Miller said an offshoot of this
(Continued on Page 6)
Price, wage controls
may shift this week
By GENE CARLSON
WASHINGTON (UPI) — It’s farewell to
the price freeze this week, but a bigger
economic issue remains unresolved: Will
Americans be living with wage-price
controls indefinitely or, as administration
officials have hinted, will the nation’s
latest experiment with economic
stabilization be over by year’s end?
Barring some last-minute complication,
such as a worsening of President Nixon’s
illness, the Phase IV economic program
will be announced about mid-week.
Nixon approved some parts of the
program from his hospital bed Saturday
and will make more decisions Monday,
according to White House aides.
The actual announcement probably will
be made by Nixon’s chief economic ad
visers: Treasury Secretary George Shultz,
Cost of Living Council, Director John
Dunlop, and Herbert Stein, chairman of
the Council of Economic Advisers.
It’s conceivable that the freeze could
remain in force on some parts of the
economy and be lifted on others.
Technically, the freeze can run until Aug.
13, a full 60 days.
In either case, within a matter of days,
consumers, businessmen and wage
earners will have a new set of economic
rules to learn.
Therein-lies one of the biggest problems
for the Nixon economic strategists. Should
the rules be simple or complex?
A price freeze is easy to understand and
thus popular with consumers. Prices can’t
go up.
The COLC has allowed a handful of
hardship exemptions in the past month -
including price increases for a dog food
and a potato chip company - but most
firms have been stuck with the prices they
1
Inside this issue
WORLD NEWS
— The bicentennial of the union will be celebrated.
— The strength of the Union is to be demonstrated by the diversity of
celebrations of the bicentennial (page 4).
— Major TV stations were rated by an outgoing FCC official according to
programming and employment practices (page 3).
— Americans migrating to Australia sometimes find it’s as easy to get into
a rut there as it is anywhere (page 9).
— In Lame Deer, Montana, the federal government tries to strike a delicate
balance between interests of coal mining, ecological conservation, and Indians’
rights (page 5).
— The headquarters of Special Watergate Investigator Cox are rigged
along the lines of a James Bond parody (page 7).
SPORTS
— The college recruiting game has the NCAA busy investigating violations
(page 12).
— Secretariat won the Triple Crown and will go down in history as one of the
greatest (page 11).
were charging on June 13, no matter now
much their costs have increased in the
meantime.
In Phase IV, however, prices will be
allowed to rise by an amount yet un
determined.
Companies might be allowed to pass
through their cost increases, or a fraction
of that amount, in the form of higher
prices. Or the administration c6uld set a
flat guideline, such as the 2.5 per cent that
existed during 1972 under Phase II.
Wages, not covered under the current
freeze, also will be restricted during Phase
IV, probably to the 6.2 per cent anntial
increase allowed during Phase II for
wages and fringe benefits.
But “cost pass throughs,” “profit
margins” and “base periods,” all part of
the current stabilization jargon, are
confusing to the average consumer. Ar
nold Weber, the first COLC director, has
argued that a set of simple rules, highly
publicized, is the best way to win popular
support for the controls, a commodity that
polls indicate now is sadly lacking.
But many administration officials,
especially Dunlop, are dead set against a
single set of price and pay standards. So is
organized labor. Dunlop argues that
guidelines inhibit collective bargaining
and encourages the press to grade every
contract “pass” or “fail,” depending on
whether it meets the wage standard, while
ignoring other important issues.
The duration of Phase IV is another
unanswered question. It is generally
conceded that replacing Phase II last
January, when the demand for goods was
strong, was chiefly responsible for the
giant surge of inflation between January
and May. The price freeze was Nixon’s
attempt to halt this price boom while
figuring out another type of controls.
But economic conditions are even higher
now than at thg first of the year. Many
industries are running at capacity, con
sumer demand remains high. Rampant
inflation overseas plus two devaluations
have made American goods more at
tractive abroad, thus adding to demand
pressures.
In short, the situation is ripe for another
price breakaway unless Phase IV can keep
the lid on inflation.
Nixon has said Phase IV will be tough,
especially in the areas of food and
gasoline. At the same time, however, there
are increasing hints that Phase IV won't
last long.
The 10-member Labor Management
Advisory Committee, an outside group
that carries great weight in the ad
ministration, said last week that “all wage
and price controls should be eliminated as
soon as possible this year.” Shultz, Nixon’s
chief economic adviser, is a longtime foe
of controls.
So there will be great pressure within the
administration in the next several months
to move toward a control-free economy,
even though polls continue to show “in
flation” as the No. 1 worry of the American
consumer.