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About Eugene register-guard. (Eugene, Or.) 1930-1983 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 13, 1963)
t i , Uki munRi MOMS XIVIMHI '' AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER ALTON F. BAKER, Publisher, 1927-1961 'Well, So Far, So Good i - 12A ALTON F. BAKER JR. Editor and Publisher EDWIN M. BAKER General Manager RICHARD A. BAKER Managing Editor ROBERT B. FRAZIER Associate Editor A. H. CURREY Associate Editor The Register-Guard's policy is the complete end impartial publication in its news pages of all news and statements on news. On this page, the editors of the Register-Guard offer their opinions on events of the day and matters of importance to the community, endeavoring to be candid but fair and helpful in the development of construc tive community policy. A newspaper is a . ( CITIZEN OF ITS COMMUNITY. Published every evening and Sunday morning by the Guard Publishing Co.. EUGENE, OREGON, SUNDAY, JANUARY 13, 1963 As 90 Citizens Gather in Salem Ninety men and women, the custodi ans of everybody's problems, are con verging on Salem. Monday they will con vene as the 52nd Oregon Legislature. Along in May, or maybe in June, they will adjourn sine die. In some respects Oregon will never be the same again. If we're lucky, it will be a better place to live because of the months these peo ple spent in Salem. The chances of this being a better state will be stronger if the 00 men and women try to see Oregon as a whole. It will be smaller if they regard themselves only as errand boys for their home com-' munities. They will make laws not just for Eugene and Enterprise and Elsie, . but for all of Oregon. Yet, most of the pressures upon them will be local pres sures, pressures from the people with the votes that, to them, count. As human beings, legislators see things through their own eyes, as all of us do. For this the citizen cannot criti cize them. They must be allowed to be themselves. Yet, there will be times these coming months when legislators will have to strain to try to put them selves in somebody else's shoes, to un derstand somebody else's point of view. This will be essential. But it will be dif ficult, especially when economic consid erations, often bearing upon the legisla tor's own economic well-being, are in question. :. :' Their heart strings will be played upon. Most of their legislation will deal with persons and projects for whom and which they can have only sympathy. Their charges are the 600,000 Oregon school children who deserve opportunity and who, in this age, can get It only it they have the kind of schooling that will enable them to compete. Their charges are the welfare cases, some of them poor almost beyond belief. Their charges are the mentally ill and the mentally re tarded, many of whom can, if properly . cared for, make a contribution to so ciety, and all of them deserving of sym pathy. Some of the problems these men and women will face will be complicated in the extreme. They will hear witnesses who seem to speak a language they never heard. Yet, it will be their task to sort through what the witnesses said, or what the members think they said, and to find a solution that is fair and for the good of Oregon. Over all their problems will hover the question of money. Where is the money in Oregon? How much can in justice be pried loose for public pur poses? How should the money, and there will never be enough, be distributed? Will the legislators have the political courage to apply a tax formula that' is fair? Or will they fear to step on the toes of their constituents? The key principle in legislation is the principle of compromise. Almost no pro- , posal is universally advocated. The legis-. lative task is to steer toward a goal that is workable and fair, that does the needed job and that does not bring un deserved hardship upon anybody. Poli tics is the art of the possible. At its best it is also the art of the glorious. Some legislative battles will be lost this ses-. sion, but in some cases the fight in itself will have been worth-while. These 90 men and women hold the future of Oregon in their hands. Their deliberations these coming months are worthy ot the closest scrutiny by all citizens. In their work they are deserv ing of the understanding and sympathy, if not always of the support, of the rest ,of us who must live, for at least two years, under the set of rules they provide. Brighter Boys Soon it will be easier to see the paper boy as he makes his appointed rounds. And that is exactly the idea of the new safety belts that all Register-Guard car riers will be asked this month to wear. The belts are orange and white and made of a material that reflects light. They resemble the military Sam Browne belt. . ' .. . - This weekend they will be distributed to carriers in the areas immediately out side Eugene. Here is where the need seems greatest. There are fewer street lights in those areas, and cars travel fast er there. By the end of the month, as the belts become available, all 495 of the Register-Guard's junior dealers will have them. Something of this sort is important on dark, rainy evenings, when boys on foot and boys on bicycles are hard to see. Bike lights help, but alone they often are not enough. There is a lesson here for anybody who ventures out in trafficked areas on dark, rainy nights. Wear something light, preferably something that will re flect light. It could be a life saver. Zoning Is Protective Down in Klamath County, where land use regulations (zoning) are being proposed and vociferously opposed the Herald and News has found it neces sary to explain the difference between zoning and urban renewal. It seems that some Klamath residents hav had the erroneous notion that the City of Springfield recently voted to throw out its zoning ordinance. Others have thought that zoning and urban re newal are one and the same. And still others have believed that zoning would dictate even the types of building ma terials which would have to be used in local construction. The Herald and News deserves praise for attempting to explain, without arousing needless new emotions, that urban renewal is distinguished from zon ing in the same way that preventative TV medicine is distinguished from radical surgery. Good zoning laws 'cannot as sure perfection in community growth entirely by themselves. Sometimes, de spite diligent zoning efforts, cancerous -areas do develop and must then be re moved by drastic means demolition and rebuilding. But, where zoning is instituted soon enough and employed with proper concern for both private and general public interests, the proba ble need for either privately financed or government-instituted urban renewal can be considerably reduced. This is essentially the point the Register-Guard and other newspapers have been trying to make in supporting proposals for zoning coastal areas of Lane, Douglas and Coos Counties. The only real difference is that if these coastal areas are allowed to become blighted because land uses have not been regulated within them, there can be no effective renewing of their lost beauty, their magnificent natural splendor. Into the Jungle Thirty-five young Americans, about a third of them Negroes, begin training this month for a domestic peace corps. .They will be sent not to the swamplands of Southeast Asia or the deserts of Arabia, but to the concrete and asphalt jungles of Harlem. Undoubtedly they will perform a needed service in this dangerous and diseased part of the world. But somehow the very idea of it seems to be a sad commentary on our civilization. If, That Is . . . Oregonians, according to a publica tion of Tax Foundation, Inc., bore less than 1 per cent of the 1962 federal tax burden. But, even so, our per capita payments to Uncle Sam amounted to $498. The aggregate of payments from this state to the federal treasury was $896 millions. See how much even a 5 per cent re duction in federal taxes would mean to us? It would give us about $45 million extra to use in solving some of our ow n problems for ourselves. Ralph McGill Brazil Classic Picture of Chaotic Land WASHINGTON NOTES: There was a small news item in the paper, two paragraphs long. It read: "Lima, Peru Five persons died early Wed- nesday in clash es between po lice 'and strik ing peasants at two sugar mills in northern Peru. -"The' clashes occurred after strikers attacked and "sought to burn down the PataDO and Pu- cala mills, inflicting heavy dam age." Here we have an example of one of the things wrong with news reporting in our time. It met the requirements of who, what, where, and when. But to day it is important to know why something happened. This par ticular news item was in the old-fashioned style. Some strik ers had attacked sugar mills. Police had beaten them back, killing five of them. But this did not give us a picture of what conditions are in -Chiclayo in knowledge of South American conditions, we can assume, with some confidence, that feudal conditions remain in Chiclayo. We may be rather certain that low wages, long hours, and poor working conditions prevail Ag riculture in Latin America is almost everywhere depressed. Its workers live in poverty and ant-farming areas have no ade quate roads or rail transporta tion to move what is grown to the urban markets. Brazil, therefore, offers the classic picture. The country has vast natural resources. A small, excessively wealthy upper class lives in luxury and enjoys a life and a culture that is truly rich. But a good two-thirds of the McGill un.ntr.ha1nace Thpir nnlltiral status is prejudiced. Illiteracy population of Brazil is under- . . .n.i.knil nn aril ma I A1 nnri im is tne rule, ueaun conaiuuns are primitive. The story is an old one. It is, however, no older than the familiar one of police vs strikers in an area where labor has no bargaining rights.' The two paragraphs out of Chiclayo would, if amplified, help us to understand why President Kennedy's intelligent nourished, uneducated, and is, of course, increasingly disen chanted with its lot. , Desperate Effort In the past two dtcades Bra zil's population has doubled while her farm production (not all of it food) has increased by about 40 per cent. This means less food per person. The gov- plan for assistance to Latin eminent has. made a sincere America is inoperative. It de pends, for a beginning, on re form by land-holders and in dustrialists in Latin America. Killing hungry and desperate men is hardly a reform. We can be pretty sure that a Commun ist or so has been bred by those long-existing conditions. -There are a number of poten tially explosive areas in latin northern Peru. One can look up ' America. Peru is one. But that the town in a book. They tell us that it Is an agricultural coastal city -of about 40,000 population. It is in a rice and sugar district. Sugar is the more important ex port. , -.Drawing on our general In the Editor's Mailbag Letters intended for the Editor's Mailbag must be . signed with the correct name and address of the writer. No anonymous letters will be published. Letters of less than 300 words in length will be given preference, as will those In which the writer con fines his letter to one topic. UO Expansion EUGENE (To the Editor) Thanks for your good editorial in the Dec. 6 issue of your paper regarding the acquisition of property east of the campus by the university, for expan sion. I wish to say that this ex pansion program has left some, and is leaving many more, with a broken spirit over giving up 0 n 1 j their homes, especially the KeCallS Incident spent considerable time trying to find a house for my brood the next day. He called me at fcur and apologized for failing. At least Ed Cone is a Christian. People that can't stand the sight of poverty put me in mind of the people that did pass up the poor rich old fellow who was helped by the Good Samari tan. If I burn in Hell hereafter, as people have suggested I do, I hope I get into a different section from these so-called charitable people of Eugene. Then, as now, they will smoke and stink. It will smell as bad as city hall politics in Eugene, and that is bad. EARL L. NEET 2595 McMillan St. elderly, who find it hard to re establish themselves again. Death has taken three from the group who were forced to give up" their homes, and a fourth lies critically , ill, and still another, who was caring ' for an invalid sister, was ob liged to find a new location and move, which was very difficult under the circumstances. We hear rumblings of dis satisfaction from several sources over the methods em ployed in acquiring some of the homes. The records show that there Is a great disparity of prices paid by the university for prop erties even within the same block and the disparity cannot be accounted for in quality of improvements. After all, would it not be to the advantage of the university, in the end, for their agents to use a little more consideration to the home owners irj their dealings? One wonders, too, if it was really necessary for the univer sity to acquire these homes, and disrupt the lives of so many people, when it already has a tract of land in this area oc cupied by only temporary hous ing, constructed during World War II. EDITH B. DAVIS . 1159W Mill St. Charity EUGENE (To the Editor) Mrs. Niven took three columns to give reasons for tho action of the Planning Commission. I'll take less. I ask Mrs. Niven, is a down and out, cold, hungry man with a smell of wine on his breath any more dangerous to our chil dren than the staid businessman driving his Cadillac home from the Elks Club or the Eugene Country Club after an evening with the boys during which, without question, he had several mixed drinks? I spent an eve ning at the Country Club re cently. It Is fresh in my mind that on the evening of Thanksgiving last, I put a man and his wife and 11 children up at my own expense, gladly, with no mental or moral reservation, nor thought of being paid back. All this because we didn't have a charitable organization in Eu gene to care for them. They were called, but failed in time of need. The next day I attempted to interest a R-G reporter in the family as a matter of human interest. I attempted to talk to seme at KVAL's studio, but it was the night the Salvation Army was kicking off their drive, so the station had no time for charity, or that's what I was told. Ed Cone, our mayor, made a three minulc appear ance on the program with the SA people. Afterward, he did lend me a sympathetic ear in the foyer of KVAL, and Ed COBURG (To the Editor) So many people are writing let ters about the proposed mis sion. It seems to me there is a great lack of Christian spirit revealed. I remember back in the early nineteen hundreds when my folks worked at the Bethel Mission in Kansas City. People did not complain about living close to the mission. I think if people taught their children to go on about their own business and not make fun of the unfortunate, there would be less children bothered. My mother cooked good food for the people. My father, who was crippled at that time, but could drive his team of horses, used to gather up the clothing, and I used to clean and repair the garments. I only remember one incident that was degrad ing. My father had a wagon-box full of clothes and shoes, and when he got to the top of one of Kansas City's steep hills he stopped to rest his team. A young fellow with a load of ma nure drove up beside him and stopped. He looked at all the clothes and said to my father, "Rag picker, old man." My father said yes. The young man said, "I have a load of manure. It is of value to people to put on their gardens." My father' said, "I sec, you have two loads of manure." The young fellow, still sarcastic, said, "No, only one." My father replied, "I see two. One in the wagon box, one on the wagon scat." He whipped up his horses and ran them down the hill. Bethel Mission was painted on the sido of the wagon-box. That lad was like many of the young fellows today, just have to do something to be noticed. They grow up without any training or respect for other people, so they make trouble for others, and get in trouble themselves. ALBERTA HULSEBUS Box 92 The Real Need EUGENE (To the Editor) Many citizens of our community have registered shock at the announcement of a federal grant to study juvenile delinquency in Eugene. It is cause for reflec tion on the reason or need for this grant. In my estimation it would be better for us to register our shock and disapproval in direct, constructive action. Eugene is a city with a great many youth programs: yet from the apparent lack of interest exhibited by citizens of the community, each one of these programs is strug gling for existence. As a citizen and taxpayer, which is the ultimate goal? To spend money that we have paid in taxes or to decrease taxes by using our own abilities and cre ative thinking to decrease the expenditures of tax money? Would it not be more satisfying to know that the value of our efforts is evident in tangible re sults within the community? . We have many organizations that are concerned with the in terests of youth not with ju venile delinquency alone. Each of these programs is suffering from lack of financial support, but more importantly, each is suffering from the dearth of adult endeavor. It is so easy to say, "It is not my child who is causing concern in the community," and to close our minds to the problem, but how often it is the community attitude that shapes the char acter and personality of our youth and gives him the courage of his convictions at a time of temptation. If you feel the desire to take part in this public concern, you can contact the youth organiza tion dearest to you. Who knows? An hour or two of your time may mean a lifetime of healthy, productive existence to some child. STEWART D. PLACE Advancement Chairman, Toshnik District, B.S.A. 2940 Adams St. Reply to Dudeck EUGENE (To the Editor) In regard to Mr. Dorvin Du deck's letter to the editor of Jan. 7, I noticed where he is op posed to the teaching of gun safety to young people. . Would he rather have these same young people be complete in competents in the use of fire arms? Those of us who teach these hunter safety courses do so with no pay and on our own time. We do it because we know that shooting can be a very en joyable sport and we hope that through our efforts we can do something to help make it a safe sport. We do NOT teach the young sters how to form a habit of killing, and guns arc not only for killing. There are many peo ple who own guns, but do not hunt. Plinking is a very enjoy able pastime and target shoot ing is becoming one of Ameri ca's fastest growing sports. Mr. Dudeck, you say "If there had been no gun, there would have been no shooting." This is very true, but if the boy you mention or anyone else wants to kill someone, they would do it, guns or no guns, whether they used a knife, a rock or what have you. Certainly no amount of train ing can force a person to be careful if he doesn't want to be, but he can be trained in the safe methods of gun handling and we can hope he will put them into practice. Since the hunter safety pro gram has been started in the state of Oregon over 50.000 stu dents have been trained in the safe use of firearms and none have been involved in a fatal firearms accident. We do not know if this will always be the situation, but we can hope it will continue to be so. Mr. Dudeck I invite you to come to the YMCA building at 12 noon on Saturday, Jan. 12 or 19 to watch a hunter safety course and become acquainted with what our program does. MICHAEL C. THOMPSON Hunter Safety instructor, 185 Jefferson St. So They Say- As a country, as a place to live and rear a family, the So viet Union is pitiful by contrast with the United States. r-llx R. MrKnlnht, Dallas, Tel., newspaper editor. There's only one way to com pete successfully all-out. If be lieving this makes you i greedy capitalist lusting after bloated profits, then I plead guilty. Henry Ford U. Brazil, largest of the Latin na tions, should be "standing on the brink" is an even more re vealing story. Cities Growing Brazil occupies almost half the continent of South America. Its population in 1940 was 41 million persons.' Today there are almost 80 million. By 1970 the number will be up to around 100 million. Their story is one familiar to all the world. The cities are growing. But what really pushes Brazil to the edge of grievous, chaotic trouble is that only about 2 per cent of all her vast land area is under cultivation, and only a third of that grows food. Fur ther to complicate this desper ate problem of food is the fact that several of the larger peas- Eric Sevareid and desperate effort to expand industry. There has neen a con siderable success. But we in-this country, with food, fiber, and commodity surplus, cannot quite comprehend that indus trial progress without a corres ponding expansion of food and purchasing power, doesn't work out. If the people can't buy the new products, then the net re sult is further liability. Nor is this all. There is not enough money to spend on pub lic health, education, and the basic services of civilization. This is a seedbed for radical measures. This is why Brazil's slums have produced pro-Castro movements. It is why, too, there are some Communists at work trying to win converts. Brazil likes to call herself "the land of the future." In a very real sense she is. So is much of Latin America. But we urgently need news in depth out of that continent to the South of us. Why is there a strike in Chiclayo's sugar mills? And what are the conditions that made at least five men will ing to die trying to correct them? Distributed, 1963, by The Hall Syndicate, Inc. JFK's Decision to Be Bold Justified - and a Relief Sevareid It would require a candle larger than any realist dares light in this naughty world to produce a reflection from the newly minted coin, Anno Dom ini 1963, bright enough to blind the wicked, but a dull glow of hope is percep tible just the same. Perhaps the glow will never truly sparkle as long as the sev- en-league stride of this arma ments race is not broken, yet both sides of the coin give off a new light. On the one side are the new problems of the Communist camp, now so fragmentized and quarrelsome that Moscow fairly surely has been forced into an extended period of reticence for reconsideration of its strategies of indirect aggression which have failed in so many places. The light of hope from the other side of the coin our sido is a reflection of new confi dence in Washington, but also, so it seems to me, new under standing of how the major pow er is historically obliged to behave not only towards the common enemy but towards the commonality of friends and allies. At the risk of appearing of fensively smug, I must say that the thinly disguised "back ground" comments by the Pres ident in Florida, concerning his decision to strike out more boldly as the allied leader, come as both relief and justification for some of us who have long been pleading for precisely this posture. Two Axioms There are, after all, a few ax ioms that can be firmly fixed even to the shifting swamp of international conduct. Two of them would go about as follows: 1. It is not possible for any alliance to follow a line of con duct that is alien to the policy of the major power within the alliance, which policy must necessarily serve the ultimate security ends of the major pow er. 2. In a peacetime alliance of democratic governments, it is impossible to achieve advance agreements on actions that will cause serious and immediate pain to any of the members, even though the distant goal appears of overriding impor tance. For these reasons the United States was obliged to act alone in the Caribbean; advance agreement from our Latin American allies would never have come. For these reasons the President now feels obliged to put the screws to our Euro pean allies in pressing for a build-up of their conventional forces, on which they have been defaulting for domestic reasons, and in discouraging ideas of in dependent, national nuclear arsenals. This is not to say United States will, prove able to work but the whole logic of the situ ation obliges it to try. It is not to say, either, that the areas in which Washington can success fully strike out on its own are unlimited. Berlin carries a built in limitation upon unilateral ac tion. So docs the Congo, given the present state of the U.N. in volvement, possible as it may be that we will become chief sup plier of manpower and strate gics as well as of money and materials a prospect this ob server contemplates with dread. Pull From Front I realize the size and influ ence of the opposing school of thought, those convinced that unless an alliance moves all in step it will break apart My own answer would be that the true test of an alliance is whether it can act effectively in a true crisis. I see little evidence that any of our systems of alliance can do this even with the push from behind; what is inherent ly required is the pull from in front. I believe these axioms can and must be applied even in the case of our ad hoc alliances for economic uplift and stabil ity, meaning particularly the Al liance for Progress. I doubt very much that even a country of such good purpose as Brazil, now half drowning in inflation, will act to save itself unless we act first, even though our action is negative. We are obliged to convince Brazilian leaders that we really will cease our period ic bailout unless they act to overmaster their domestic ail ment, excruciatingly painful though the cure may be. In this case and in others we are how obliged to establish, so to speak, the credibility of our economic deterrent. Popularity Contest ' In acting upon the foremen tioned principles, we are going to undergo an intellectual and emotional crisis ourselves. The prevailing pyschology of 20 years encrustation is not to be changed without suffering; and if we thin! we have an "un popular image" now, it is noth ing to what it will be, and in places where we very much want to be liked. But the Presi dent has now finally and frank ly stated what some of us have long waited for we are with drawing from the popularity contest. Morally responsible leader ship comes to this sooner or later, whether in a domestic family or in a family of nations. It must in the name of the final good for the greater number. (Distributed 193 by The Hall Syndicate, Inc.) at-; Jfci2SSS23E MEMBER OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS The Associated Press Is enUtlrd exclusively to the use for republi cation ot all the local newt printed In this newspaper. MEMBER Or THE AUDIT BUREAU or CIRCULATIONS Services United Presa International WILLIAM WASMANN, DO .N.N L. BO Mia M, News Editor City Editur that the in tact, its will; Ross r. JOHNSON, Advertising Director JARL FUGLE Circulation Manager ROBERT K BERTSCH Promotion W B JOHNSTON JR. Auditor AR.NS STROMMCR Production
