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About Eugene register-guard. (Eugene, Or.) 1930-1983 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 21, 1949)
1 , I t Page IDA Register-Guard, Eugene, Ore., Sun., Aug. 21, 1949 AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER iPubllihed Ever Evcnlnl end Sunday) EDITOR AND PUBUSUEB Allon r. Baker MA MARINO EDITOR William M Tume NEWS SEBV1CB Aeaoclatad Presa. United Prete MEMBER Audit Bureau of Circulation Entered at the Poet Otfloa at Eugene, Orefoo. aa iecona- Tha Refliur-Ouard'i poller f tha eomp'eu and Impartial publication In Ita nawa Degea or au newa ana wwnh w mm On Uila pate the editor! of The Reglater-Guerd offer their optnlona on eventa of the da and mattera of Importance to the community endeavoring to be candid but fair and hlnl'M In the development of constructive community policT Interpreting "The Soviet Man" An unusually Interesting journalistic ef fort is an issue of a new fortnightly maga zine called "The Reporter" which seeks to give this "western world" of ours an inter pretation of "The Soviet Man." The editors Bay: "We don't go into the ideological problems of Communism ... we do try to see the Soviet regime through the human beings it has molded. There are about 193 million of these human beings. Ideologists may change their tunes . . . but the Soviet Man Is a more endur ing, formidable fact, perhaps the most im portant fact of our contemporary life. . . ." So they present a series of swift-running sketches, by people who have lived the Russian life. They endeavor to show us the Russian child in school, the artisan in his daily routines in state factory and state owned apartment house; the peasant and his wife at their labors on the collective farm and on their own little garden plot; the com mon soldier, on' and off duty; the famous artist who represented the highly favored "intellectual class"; the high-ranking official of party and government. Most revealing, perhaps, is George Fischer's account of his progress through the Soviet schools, until his father, an American correspondent brought him to the United States in 1939. Till he arrived in America, the boy had only one ambition to be a tank commander in the Red Army, but "Becoming a Red Army officer was more than merely the adventurous, glamorous, and popular thing to do. I had another motive ' one that is fostered as carefully among Soviet children as getting ahead on one's own Is among Americans. That is the creed that noth ing is so sacred, attractive, and rewarding as service to "the cause." This means service to the state, and to the cause of Socialism and Its Soviet fatherland for a better and happier World." George was in the Russian schools during the period of the great "purge." To appreci ate how completely the minds of the very young can be warped: "When the father of my closest friend, a veteran member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, was arrested, the boy was burning mad. But his anger was aimed at the time, anyway only at the rudeness and harshness of the secret-police officials who had arrested his parents and kept him from them. The sixteen-year-old daughter of the Commis sar for Foreign Trade did not show her feelings upon her father's arrest. Soon thereafter, at a mass meeting of the whole school, she made the usual statement renouncing all ties with him, a proven enemy of the people and of her beloved Soviet government. "At the height of the purges, my mother raised a question about a family friend, a de voted Communist official, whom my brother and I idolized. Suppose, she asked, this man were found by the Soviet government to be ej spy. My unhesitating answer was that I Would merely be surprised at how cleverly the enemy In our ranks was able to disguise hlm- ieir. But is it possible to command the think ing of people all through life even by this process of rigid indoctrination in early youth? The answer in the "portraits" of adult Russians is "NO!". Even in Russia there is the germ of a healthy skepticism. And there is a very real and often expressed desire for freedom of speech and thought as we know those things. But there is a lingering pre deliction, as evidenced in the statement of the Russian DP in Germany who asked not to be returned to his native land for a while: A young mechanic from Dnepropetrovsk, who was not going back at once, told me this: "Life in Russia is unbearable, and that is why T have not returned h6me. You do not know what It means to live In constant fear of de portation to a labor camp and not to be able to speak one's mind." Yet he planned to re turn home eventually: "Life is nice here In . the West," he went on. "I can talk to mv : heart's content. But it Is a silly and degrading business to work for the private profit of an other man, and not for the good of the com munity. I cannot understand this either. It will be a nice diversion to stay here, but I think I will have to go back. If only they gave us some freedom, there would be no country In the world better than ours." The effort to interpret the Russian people to the rest of the world is significant and praiseworthy. Nobody can read these simple accounts of how Russian people live and think without saying to himself: "There but for the grace of God go I." The problem of Russian relations is not new. It is as old as the hills, it is the prob lem of getting behind the barriers of "gov ernments" and self-perpetuating ruling groups to an understanding of human beings. The Russian child is taught definitions of "freedom" and "democracy" which do not coincide with ours. The Russian people are being taught to hate us and our institutions and that is a danger which we must seek somehow to avoid. We Owe Claude a Dinner When the League of Oregon Cities was meeting in Eugene last fall, Claude Gerlach, then mayor of Springfield, offered to bet a good dinner if Springfield then sweating out a 96.4 tax rate didn't go into the coming year with a lower rate than Eugene. Thanks to the SpringfieldChnmber's energetic cam paign for revaluation and County Assessor George Stock's thorough-going Job in the Springfield area and rigid economy in city and school operations, the Springfield rate ha been backed down to 58.3 compared with Eugene's 72, so it's up to us to say along with congratulations: "Come and get it, Claude. The steak will be thick, and how do you like it done?" The real problem in assessments is to cap ture new values as they develop and of course to prevent escapes. What John Citizen actually pays in dollars is not actually changed by a mere change in the ratio of assessment because if the valuations are uni formly low, the rates will be high or the re verse. Springfield's complaint last year was that even on our assumed 50 per cent of market value, much property in that area was appraised far below that point and some not at all. This, of course resulted in distor tion of the rate and a heavy burden on those whose appraisals had been brought up to date. No doubt there will now be some loud complaints that Springfield valuations have been placed too high, but as we understand it Mr. Stock plans to move just as rapidly as he can over the entire county. An analysis of the percentage of increase does not, at this time, give a conclusive picture, but the percentages are interesting. Percent Taxing Body 1948 Valuation 1949 Increase Coburg $ 79,868 96,404 21 Cottage Grove 1,462,796 1,904,458 30 Creswell 235,430 254,975 8 Eugene 22,112,790 27,113,164 23 Florence 308,804 472,026 53 Junction City 884,990 1,230,696 39 Oakridge 411,093 865,784 . 110 Springfield 4,197,924 7,454,652 79 Whole County 74,000,000 94,000,000 27 The percentage of increase in the last year is not an accurate index because growth is never uniform. Likewise the percentage of increase is not so marked where the start is made from a large base. Also it is quite likely that Eugene and some of the other areas re flect previous increases due to reappraisal in preceding years. It should be recognized that Assessor Stock is getting over the ground as fast as he can. "What will happen if we get into a run of hard times?" There will be re-adjustments just as there were during the '30's, but the process never quite keeps pace with economic changes. The biggest problem at all times is to achieve something like parity in assessments in every part of the county and on every class of property. Oakland Tackles Its Parking Of interest to those who are wrestling with Eugene's traffic management problems will be a report of the effort now being made in Oakland, California as summarized in a bulletin of the Commonwealth Club. John G. Marr, director of the Oakland City Planning Commission, gave the results of a fact finding inquiry: Oakland's central business district com prises 212.4 acres a space actually not greater than Eugene's central business district. In Oakland's central business area, a total of 41.6 acres is devoted to off-street parking or about 20 per cent. Oakland has 12,868 parking spaces In the central district, of which 7,800 are off-street and 5,000 at curb. In Oakland, 150,000 people enter the cen tral business district during 8 business hours; this figure includes 15,000 employed. Six additional off-street parking areas have been recommended to the City Council. Also recommended is the ear-marking of 50 percent of all parking meter revenues for off-street parking acquisition. Mr. Marr reported that neighboring cities in the Bay area Richmond, Hayward, Ala meda, San Leandro are busy developing both public and privately owned parking facilities (developing their trade at the ex pense of bottle-necked San Francisco). The summary does not include any reference to Mass Transportation, but an intensive study on this problem is being made for the entire Bay area. Evidently Mr. Marr came in for the usual lively question period, as to whether public ly owned parking facilities would violate "free enterprise," as to the use of parking meters as a taxing device and not merely for traffic regulation. Mr. Marr put "the clincher" on the argu ments in this exchange: Q. Is It not tine that if NO PARKING were allowed on the streets in the central districts, it would greatly reduce the parking problem? A. Cities MUST provide public parking facilities in the centra! districts if property values and public volume are to be main tained. In other words, it doesn't matter whether the job gets done with public or private funds, it must be done, if cities are to hold their importance. The horse and buggy is gone. The motor age must be served. A Buffalo man lets his bair grow because he says haircuts give him heart trouble. One more raise from the barbers and we may have that, too. Another Slum Clearance Problem to Be Solved lends meet. Yet I love my seiucg old but my! life is not too important when our census will be more than i50 million. I fought for my coumrv in one world war and I was proud I note in the paper that Harry's right hand man is a crook. Why not give him a good term and cut taxes a little. a Can any one blame people for going on relief whor. r wrecking the finest country 0" ....n .... Sincerely, George S. McCord V In The Editor's Mail bag REQUEST EUGENE (To the Editor) Shouldn't the Register-Guard make its readers more aware of the danger to American civil lib erties inherent in the Mundt-Fer-guson Bill now before the Senate Judiciary Committee? According to this bill, an ad ministrative board, something like the present President's Loyalty Review Board, can blacklist or ganizations as "Communist fronts" and compel them to register as "Communist", organizations and to turn in their membership lists, etc. The present loyalty board has list ed some hundred and fifty. Pre sumably these would be a nucleus, and other organizations would be investigated and added by the new board. Now the term "communistic" is very elastic one and is often used by conservatives to brand any change in the existing system. It is hard for someone who is do ing very well under the "status quo to see that the welfare of the whole nation may demand changes. What, would a Loyalty Review Board under George III have said about George Washing ton or even Alexander Hamilton? What would a "thought control" board under President Buchanan have said of Abraham Lincoln? We all remember how Roosevelt's New Deal was "Communistic" to some people. The present Loyalty Review Board is using, so I have been told, the list of organizations de clared subversive by a research economist of the National Associ ation of Manufacturers. Cannot you imagine a still more conserva tive board declaring subversive any organization designed to change (even by the most constitu tional means) the economic anc" political condition of our people. The danger that a few Commu nists may join liberal organization is nothing compared to the danger that "thought control" legislation may negate our civil liberties. As a teacher and voter I hope that the Register-Guard will dis cuss this issue. Very truly yours. RUTH JACKSON. TROUBLE EUGENE (To The Editor) You people want a free press and you have it. But are you doing your,duty to the American peo ple. I just got my telephone bill arid note there is $1.50 tax. I pay income tax no matter how meager it is. I pay tax on all drugs I use in my business. I pay tax on all my food as all common citizens. I barely make FI--f. -uUr-. $"pal and ofTrtT1'! or Pacific 1st Federal Maximum Home loakJ MADE with speed and simplicity TO BUY TO BUILD TO REFINANCE WE CHARGE NO COMMISSION BROKERAGE, OR HIDDEN CHARGES , INSURED SAVINGS F.H.A. Approved Lending InsHtufioi 1 0th & Willamette Phone 4-6241 A philosopher advises us to have a daily hour of meditation. The tip isn't needed by people who wait for busses. In hot weather, advises a doctor, find a good spot and sit tight. But he doesn't mean it the way you're taking it. 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