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About The Oregon statesman. (Salem, Or.) 1916-1980 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 25, 1948)
ttl - . '1-1 4 The Statesman. Salem, Oregon, Saturday. December 23, 1S43 tatesmati "M Favor Steays Us, No Fear Shall Awe" From First Statesman. March 21, 1SS1 THE STATESMAN PUBLISHING COMPANY CHARLES A. SPRAGUE, Editor and Publisher (Entered at the poitofflce at Salem. Oregon. as second class matter under act of congress March J. ItTt. Publish very morning except Monday. Business office HJ S. Commercial. Salem, Oregon. Telephone 1-2441. membek or rum associated run Tke Associated Fress Is title exclmsively to the ut for rrabUcsUM of an tft local sews ortBted U this awsr. as well as aJI AP mwi dlspotcfcos. MEMBER PACmC COAST DIVISION OF BUREAU OF ADVXBTISINO Advertising Representatives Ward-Grtfflth Co- New York. Chicago, San Francisco. Detroit. MEMBER AUDIT BUREAU OF CIRCULATION 7 Man ta A ) By City Carrier Oregon Kisewnere in U.S.A. ono month. , , Six month Ono year ... - ... - On month . Six months. One year .1 .4.00 , Elsewhere In U.S.A. 1 00 (OS ll.se . ret oe .ULM When Innocent Suffer Whether Laurence Duggan's death was an ac cident, suicide or murder may never be known. Whatever the cause it cut short a brilliant ca reer in public service. He was admired and re spected and trusted by such men as Sumner Welles and A. A. Berle, former under secre taries of state. His latest work was to handle the exchange of university students with Europ ean countries which had promotion of interna tional understanding as one of its purposes. It seems impossible to divorce bis death from the fact that his name had come up in the cur rent espionage inquiries. Whittaker Chambers asserts he never accused him of revealing state department secrets. Now, Rep. Richard M. Nixon of the investigating committee says that recent developments had cleared Duggan's name. If worry over any cloud on his loyalty drove him to jump from a 16th story window in New York City, then the clearance is indeed belated. It is a terrific thing to accuse innocent people of grave offenses. At best a certain stigma or at least notoriety thereafter attends them. The weapon of publicity is merciless; and those seiz ing it must use it with great care. Duggan has been a victim in this instance which should arouse the grief of the whole country. Judge Walker Withdraws from Case Out of an excess of zeal some persons ad dressed letters to Judge Arlie G. Walker while he had before him the matter of attack on the annexation of the Kingwood district to Salem, udge Walker could have cited the correspond ents for contempt of court if they tried to in fluence his decision. Rather than do that the judge dissociated himself from the case. A new Judge will be named to hear the case. Probably those who wrote the judge did so in ignorance of its impropriety. Hence, we refer to it editorially and add the comment that when case is before a judge the only approach to him is through attorneys representing the sides involved, in formal proceedings. The public, no matter how much interested, must keep out of it. When, however, a judge renders a decision it becomes open to comment, approval or condem nation.. The constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech protects the individual in his criticism of the judge or of the decision, subject only to the laws of libel and slander. when a friend will comment, in a blinding storm, that 'the paper said it would be clear." We'd like to get it on the record that "the paper" doesn't have a thing to do with the fore cast. And it doesn't do any forecasting, either. Once-in a while it may grumble around about the weather and intercede with the elements for help.; But more often it is content to let nature take its course and a pretty nice course it us ually is. Aslfor forecasts, "the paper" just prints what someone tells us. If the weatherman says it's going to rain, and then the sun comes out, that's just pure contrariness. But it isn't our contrari ness,: honest. Decency in Government and Politics The reaction of democratic leaders to the mis representations of the sheriff-elect of Multno mah county in his election campaigns is disturb ing to friends of good government. Instead of condemning such means of getting office "under false pretenses" the local leaders come to his support and promise to provide him with ade quate bond. The way was open to repudiate him and his methods, for he was only a two-day defnocrat, having changed his registration from republican just a few days before he filed as candidate for sheriff. " But no democratic leader in state or county has risen to rebuke such political prac tice not even the ever-vocal Monroe Sweet land, democratic national committeeman. And Walter J. Pearson, the new state treasurer, is busy as a birddog to help the political fabricator to qualify with bond. The democrats may call the expose "politics;" but as the Oregonian says it is a matter of mor als, not politics. It further proposes that the late victor resign his office after qualifying and that the county commissioners then appoint a re spectable and competent democrat to the office which ought to expunge the accusation of politics. The fruits of victory taste sweet to the democrats in Oregon but they can become bit ter if moral standards are sacrificed for political advantage. We Don't Forecast, Honest We don't believe in passing the buck, at least not much, but we'll be a double-dyed ring-tailed raccoon if we want to take the rap for the weather forecasts. Not that we aren't in sympathy with the weatherman, and also we're perfectly willing to give him our grandma's prescription on how to redict. But sometimes it really gets us down A letter signed only with initials does not qualify for publication in our Safety Valve; but one such received warrants a paragraph. It deals with that public nuisance, the person who dumps garbage on roadsides and in drainage ditches in the country. When that happens we wish some one; would gather up the stuff and dump it right back on the offender's lawn. Gar bage disposal is simple: have the santary service make regular pickups, or else haul the garbage in closed containers out to the sanitary fill and leave it there. Don't despoil the countryside and give offense to country neighbors. MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYBODY Crime and Punishment From the San Francisco Chronicle In the news last week was a brief item, quoted from Moscow radio, telling of live- and seven year prison terms handed 12 di rectors and engineers of Soviet factories for turning out defec tive and substandard goods. This latest purge of Soviet fac tory officials has been traced to publication in Pravda of a com plaint about rubber-soled shoes manufactured by the Kapranov factory. A comrade alleged that a pair bought by his daughter lost their soles in four days and a pair given her in replacement lasted only three days. This follows a regular pattern. First there appears in Pravda, or Izestia, or Trud, or the Literary Gazette, or one or another of the official Soviet journals, according to the sphere of the offense, sharp complaint of something gone wrong in some phase of Soviet industry. This accusation should be notice to the responsible indi viduals involved to beat it fast to another country, except that es cape is impossible. For then fol lows arrest of the accused, some sort of trial, condemnation and punishment. The penality may range from a figurative public parade in sackcloth and iishes, accompan ied by recantation, as in the case of the Soviet c mposers and the genetic scientists, up to hard la bor in a Siberian prison camp or death. At the end Mosc w radio may tell the world briefly what befell the culprits. Examples of this operation in progress are easy to find in the Soviet press. The following ex amples are drawn from transla tions by the Far Eastern Insti tute, University of Washington: Here is one from Trud of July 11, 1949. The Vice Minister of Trade of the RSFR says th.. Kirov Raipromkombinat tried to sell at the Sverdlovsk fair "crudely fashioned women's and children's sandals." The Krasnokamsk Gor promkombinat offered "poor toys made of papier mache." The Syzran Nnogopromsoyuz could not find buyers for "teddy bears and bunnies of poor quality ma terial," also expensive. A lot of rusty buttons, says the Vice Min ister, crude woxnware, chil dren's shorts and other products had to be withrawn from sale. Such examples could be multi plied all of them pointing di rectly to unhappy days for the heads of the enterprises in volved. Soviet industry evident ly has trouble getting going ef fectively and whatever the caus es the executive managers have to take the rap. To turn to other phases of So viet life: Here is Prayda, June 5, 1948, charging that the Ministry for the Construction of Fuel En terprises had fulfiled only 27 per cent of its allotted plan for the ; first quarter of the year. "In tolerable and unjustifiable de linquency," says Pravda. This language meant nothing pleasant for the heads of this Ministry. In the Literary Gazette, Octo ber 2, 1948, the Soviet Academy of Sciences is taken for a jolting ride. It "ignores the history of the USSR;" "some comrades (in the academy) treat this branch of historical knowledge as jour nalism or current politics, but not as a science." The situation is termed "appalling." In Trud, July 13, 1948, the Ba sin Committee (Comrade Bak lan, chairman) at Vladivostok is flatly blamed for the lack of water sport facilities at that port and the Territorial Committee for Physical Culture and Sports (Comrade Tertytchny, chairman) is charged with lack of interest. Farewell Comrades Baklan and Tertytchny! Two authors are denounced, one of them (Literary Gazette, March C, 1948) because he did not bpw profoundly enough to Lenin; the other (Voprosy Istorii, April, 1948) because in a book on the Japanese-American war in the Pacific he gave too little at tention to the Red Army. Running a police state is a tough business. Doubtless plenty of the delinquencies charged are real but it is easy to see that the system lends itself to trumped up or technical charges for pur poses of political or personal re prisal. The manager of a collec tive farm better not h;ive a drought unless he is in solid with his superiors. Literary Guidepost By IV. G. Rogers THE LAW OF THE SOVIET STATE. Andrei Y. Vyshinsky, general editor, translated by Hugh W. Babb (American Coun cil of Learned Societies Mac millan; $15) Written in 1936 just after Vy shinsky prosecuted Kamenev, Radek and others for treason, translated for the first time, this volume which, according to the foreword, is read by "every So viet student of government and law," ought also to .be read by every American student of the same subjects. -It does not seem;; it is true, to f have much information new to us, unless we are! surprised to learn that the president of the United States can name more judges "to assure himself a ma jority in the supreme court." or that John Adams (I assume George Mason is meant) drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights. But this book is not just dry law. This is, in fact, defi nition plus exhortation; this is the liiW and the prophet. In view of the period when this was writttn. it is n;itural that Hitler should come 'in for much attention But Vyshinsky and his contributors are not content with calling Fascists '"bloody and barbarous:" to oth er foes they apply equally sear ing terms, not as if to argue but to destroy and liquidate. Enemies like Trotsky and Bug harin are '"bandits." and others are "devilish . . . traitorous . . . malicious . . . perverted" folk. The book begins with the as sumption that the old state, "a machine to crush and to repress the toilers," must be destroyed before a new can be built. And the new must be "mighty and invincible." ls law will not be, like our bourgeois fabric, the expression of abstractions, but must arise out of "the economic production relationships." Then follow descriptions of the con stitutions of 1918. 1924, and 1936. the final Stalin constitution which is explained and extolled at length "THE STOCKINGS ' WERfc HUNG BY THE CHIMNEY WITH CARE-!" iSi'i i i ? jljr j yiif tatMptJ wmmmn llt vk vmw 4 1 &mwmMmP?& lift J? 1 1 1 H 1! rM c ' YM to Open Doors to Vacationers Young Closed today, the Salem YMCA will open its doors Monday morn ing to the annual swarm of va cationing youngsters who splash in its pooL play games in its 1 iby. enjoy sports in its gym and learn t . ft i . i aooux saiem uirougn mucn ques tioning on a series of tours While girls are swimming in the morning, beginners at 9:15 and advanced at 11, the boys Will be participating in the trips. These will leave the YM at 9:30 daily with guides. The schedule includes National Battery company on Mon day; Valley Packing company, Tuesday; Thomas Kay Woolen mills, Wednesday; Oregon Pulp and Paper company. Thursday, and state penitentiary, Friday. Side trips will also be to the capitol, fire department and canneries. Movies will be shown at 2:15 and 4:15 p.m. daily to both boys and girls. Swimming for boys will be at 1 to 2 p.m. for cadets and preps; 2 to 4 p.m. for junior and senior high school. Gymnasium sessions will be from 1 to 4 p.m. daily for junior and senior high school stu dents, from 4 to 5 p.m. Monday for cadets and from 4 to 5 p m Thurs day for preps. A city-wide doubles ping-pong tournament will begin Tuesday af ternoon, with play ejeh day at 3 p.m. Medals will be given by the Y's Men's club. The YM will be closed New Year's day also, delaying its an nual open house program to a later date. Heating Fumes May iause Severe Illness Dangerous fumes from prolonged heating in closed houses such as in the current cold spell can cause severe illness,: Dr. Willard J. Stone, Marion county health offi cer, warned Friday. The health deparmnt investi gated a recent Salm case when nausea, headaches and unconsci ousness resulted frum what was believed to have been heating fumes from a closed' fireplace. Heated livii'sj quarters should be properly ventilated. Dr. Stone said. Heating equipment also should be in good shape and .should also be properly ventilated. Dr. Stone alo reported that the numlx-r of dysentery cases in Mar ion county ha i dropped from a to tal of 23 reported for the week ending December 18 to only one reported case this vast year. Chick en pox also declined from 34 cases reported last week to 15 this week. Bus Company Asks To Borrow Funds For Construction The Portland Traction company Friday filed with the Public Utili ties commissioner here application to borrow $400,000 to cover the cost of construction operations during Atiffsan aly sis of the application and figures on file in the utilities commission show that for the 12 months ended October 31, 1948, earnings of the traction company represented a return on the origin al cost of the property, plus work ing capital, of 1.45 per cent. The interurban property, during the same period, showed a return of 36.01 'per cent. Officials said the latter figure was significant for the reason that Mayor Earl Riley and Commissioner Dorothy Lee op posed taking over the interurban property on the ground it would prove a "white elephant." The interurban property oper ates largely between Portland, Ore gon City and Estacada and most of its revenue is from freight business- Final ord on Duggan Death Inconclusive NEW YORK, Dec. 24-yp)-Police today gave their final word on the death of ; Laurence Duggan "he either accidentally fell or jumped" from his 16th floor office last Monday. Police commissioner Arthur W. Wallander advised Mayor William T'Dwyer of the official findings after a complete investigation of the death of the former State De partment official. Wallander said there was nothing to indicate foul play. Duggan, 43, was president of the Institute of International Educa tion at the time of his death. Police originally termed the death a "fell or jumped" case but made a complete investigation at the request of former undersecre tary of State Sumner Welles. Welles said he did not believe Duggan had killed himself because of the contents of a letter Duggan wrote to Welles just before his death. His family expressed be lief it was an accident. In Washington today. Attorney General Tom Clark called Duggan "a loyal employe of the United jOur Quality Material . . . j. . . Expert Service . . . Costs No More! I j j PLUMBING -HEA TNO lSl79HCO1taAl Ph.' J.414I 4 , States government," and two con gressmen admitted they deserved "some honest criticism' for pub licizing a later-discredited report that Duggan aided communist spies. . Diary of A Sidewalk Superintendent Dec. 25 Took my rtzv lar stroll downtown to inspect the new Steven and Son place at State; and Liberty. After work-' ing hard all week, telling-: the masons how to do this; helping the carpen--ters on that ... thought! I'd take the day off! Gives me a chance to seel how I'm doing. . . . . J; Couldn't get inside lo check everything but did have a pretty full view of the outside. Sur- prising how fast it's coming along. Looks as. if I'd figured a January opening date about: right! Be a relief to have it finished. Look for big gift from Sid when he finds out how conscien- tious I am . . . looking after Stevens and Son i even on my day off! STEVENS if' T A i '' 'ill' May this message of thankful apprecia tion for your goodwill come to you at a time when you too arc enjoying the pleasant memories of friendships that have lasted through long loyal years. WE HOPE YOU LIKE YOUR GIFT and if it came from STEVENS, we want you fo know that we will gladly make any exchanges, size your ring, or adjust and regulate your STEVEN'S watch . . . We want your gift from STEVENS to be perfect In every way and we ask you to give us the' opportunity to make it so and keep it that way. V2X,.... . - ... . . .... . . . . ,1 -this: t--, ; eras.- -fv, ,.j a ! m .1 . w r-- . m mm 1 .. 'Jilt- , a - s '3 at a S xr T t MMMWKJT' tfW. . 7 VU1 I f . L 1 I I I linn' i f I .. .-,. v,"'rrmtm,'. tri.Tt,cr .31 w ? i " .f 1 r . ML: IHt a a k i m i ri afciaesaaaaaaaaawi ms mm mm mm mmm n . m m ----- i