The Charlotte News
Friday, June 7, 1957
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that before the Senate Select Committee investigating racketeering and organized crime influence within unions and management, now focusing on the Bakers Union, the latter's vice-president, Max Kralstein, had reportedly had a lavish dinner which had raised $60,000 for him, organized by union chairman Frank Dutto. The latter had taken the Fifth Amendment the previous day when asked whether he had been a Communist prior to 1950, saying that he was not presently a member of the Communist Party and that since 1950 he had filed non-Communist affidavits with the Government, as required under Taft-Hartley. The dinner for Mr. Kralstein, who had pleaded the Fifth Amendment to every question posed to him, had been thrown by New York Local No. 3 in June, 1956, at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Joseph Tenczar, an ousted union business agent, said that much of the money raised at the event had come from pressure exerted on employers for contributions. The employers had purchased tickets at $25 each and advertisements in a souvenir program. Robert F. Kennedy, chief counsel of the Committee, said that the local's financial records showed that Mr. Kralstein had received more than $61,000 of the banquet proceeds to purchase a new home and furnishings, with the total receipts raised having been about $85,000. Mr. Dutto said that he could not see anything wrong about asking employers to purchase tickets to attend the dinner and purchase advertisements in a souvenir program, that the union was always being asked to contribute to Bakery Employer Association affairs. He said that from the beginning of the planning of the banquet, there had been no secret about the local's officials wanting to raise money to purchase a home for Mr. Kralstein. Mr. Kennedy had initially asked Mr. Dutto about alleged former Communist connections, reading from union proceedings that the witness had been denied credentials to sit as a delegate to a bakery workers convention on the ground of his alleged Communist ties.
Leaders of the Southern bloc in the House this date predicted victory in their effort to attach a jury trial amendment to the civil rights bill, which would provide for a jury trial in the case of a charge of criminal contempt for violation of the rights accorded in the bill, primarily regarding voting rights. Passage of the bill in the House was anticipated for the following week, but a bitter fight would take place in the Senate, where a filibuster was expected to occur. Representatives Edwin Willis of Louisiana and John Bell Williams of Mississippi said that it appeared that they had the votes to support the amendment. Representative Thomas Abernethy of Mississippi said that the actual count showed 240 votes in favor of the amendment, 22 more than needed for a majority, but he conceded that it might not be possible to hold all of the Republicans upon whom the Southerners were counting. The President and the Republican House leadership had opposed the amendment, but Mr. Willis said that he believed there had been a shift of opinion among Republicans in favor of the amendment. His speech the previous day had been received with applause from Republicans.
The U.S. this date signed a 48.9 million dollar aid agreement with Communist Poland and promised 46.1 million more if and when Congress provided authority and funding. The agreement had ended 3 1/2 months of negotiations initiated the prior February by the President's promise to help Poland or any other Communist nation which demonstrated a will to assert its sovereignty and independence from the Soviet Union. The long-range purpose behind the aid program, according to the President, was to allow the Soviet satellite countries to know that they could look to the U.S. for support and assistance if they rejected control from Moscow, as had been done previously in the case of Yugoslavia. In effect, the U.S. had committed itself to a 95 million dollar Polish aid program, but it could only make a firm pledge for half of that amount because of delay in the House on a billion dollar bill to extend the surplus agricultural commodities disposal program. An announcement of the agreement had issued from the State Department, indicating that the two governments had also agreed on "early negotiations" for settlement of U.S. property claims resulting from Polish nationalization measures following World War II, and regarding the unblocking of about two million dollars worth of Poland's prewar assets in the United States.
In Vienna, it was reported that the Austrian police at the Nickelsdorf border station had been summoned across the border to an Hungarian frontier station during the afternoon to receive the two 20-year old University of South Carolina students who had been held by the Hungarian Communists since May 26. The Austrians planned to bring the two students and another Austrian, who had been expelled from Hungary, to Vienna police headquarters. The case was being handled by the Austrian authorities because it involved an illegal border crossing by the two students, and later they would be turned over to the U.S. consular authorities in Vienna. The U.S. Legation in Budapest had been informed earlier by the Hungarian Government that the students would be released. They had disappeared over the Hungarian border after they had been on a hiking tour in Austria, indicating to an acquaintance that they wanted to cross the border into Hungary "for excitement" and pretend to be spies. Until early during the current week, Hungarian officials had disclaimed knowledge of their whereabouts. The parents of the two students expressed happiness at the news and praised the State Department for its work in freeing them. They also said that they had no objection to their sons continuing their European tour if they wished to do so.
A report from aboard the U.S.S. Saratoga indicates that a pilot of one of two jet planes, which had crashed into the Atlantic in an area 120 miles northeast of Jacksonville, Fla., the previous night, had been rescued. The President was a guest aboard the aircraft carrier and observed the operation. Sixteen of 18 warships had escorted the carrier, which had been dispatched to take part in the hunt, and four of the planes aboard had joined the search at dawn. There was still no word about the cause of the mishap. The planes had not been taking part in the Saratoga maneuvers. Three of five training exercises which the President had been scheduled to witness had been canceled. The plan had been to enable the President to observe the firing of a Terrier guided missile from a heavy cruiser, but that plan had to be scuttled because of the search. Still on the schedule was the firing of two other types of guided missiles, the Regulus and the Sidewinder.
In Tokyo, it was reported that a Japanese scrap metal collector, 22, had been injured this date when a bazooka shell exploded as he picked up shells during target practice at the U.S. Marine firing range at Gotemba, about 60 miles south of Tokyo.
In Columbia, S.C., a 29-year old black man, who had been convicted of rape of a white woman, had been executed this date, calmly muttering: "Lord, have mercy on me. I thank the Lord, Jesus, I may be one of his witnesses for evermore." As the prison physician was examining the body of the deceased to make sure he was dead, a black cat had appeared around the death chamber and moved toward the electric chair and began sniffing. After taking another sniff at some water which had dripped from the moist electrodes, the cat jumped toward the witnesses to the execution, and they cringed, backing against a wall of the room. A guard then opened the door and the cat strolled out
The conviction and death sentence appear to have been the result of an attempted iteration of an earlier Clarence Darrow tactic, which, in this case, badly backfired, leading to the conclusion that if you are not Clarence Darrow
Could counsel, for instance, have challenged the voluntariness of the confession by the accused or the nature of the eyewitness identification, whether from an unduly suggestive live show-up, live line-up or selection from an array of photographs, or a combination thereof? Could there have been, after the affirmance by the State Supreme Court, a petition raising collaterally those or other issues by way of habeas corpus in the Federal courts, asserting violation of Constitutional rights? Was he promised a form of lenience for his confession? Was his tentative plea of guilty to burglary entered knowingly and voluntarily, with an intelligent understanding of the consequences of the admission and waiver of his privilege against self-incrimination? Not enough fact is provided by the conclusory appellate decision to make that determination in a time prior to Miranda v. Arizona and Boykin v. Alabama, and in a time when emphasis on the Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel, especially in parts of the South, was not very much considered as a fundamental right, even in death penalty cases. One would have to have access to the trial transcript to determine whether some or other such issues had merit at the time.
Indeed, while 15 years ahead of Furman v. Georgia, enterprising defense counsel on appeal might have at least ventured the argument that the death penalty in this case was cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment as being disproportionate to the crime, enabling preservation of the issue for petition for writ of certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court—which, given that the execution took place a mere 39 days after the State Supreme Court decision, was obviously never even attempted or a stay apparently sought on the due process issues raised on appeal.
While on its face, the case appeared open and shut, careful note should be made of who the local solicitor was at the time, not meaning thereby to cast aspersions on anyone, then or now, certainly not generationally, or to suggest any "rubber-hose" or more subtle, improperly coercive tactics then extant in the jurisdiction to extract ready and convenient confessions from a person on whom the focus of attention has fixed, perhaps because of that person having, years earlier, aggravated law enforcement, it just being a cautionary tale always applicable to every criminal case, no matter how minor or major it might seem in the abstract, the devil always being in the details, or, in the instant case, the cat o'nine tails on the chaingang. One would, for instance, not wish to wind up out there in the swamp of a night real soon for not being nice and cooperative. It's better to do it this way, son, to make peace with yourself.
And the fact that one of the two defense co-counsel subsequently was appointed in 1971 by President Nixon to the U.S. District Court, where he served until 1990, does not change the equation. Apparently, he also was instrumental in convincing Frank McGuire in 1964 to become head coach at the University of South Carolina, another strike against him in question of his impartial judgment.
In Fayetteville, N.C., the death toll from the collision the previous day between a flat-bed truck and a tractor-trailer had reached 19 this date, equaling the nation's record for the worst trucking accident in its history. Some 13 persons had died at the scene and the others had died in hospitals. The tractor-trailer truck, loaded with potatoes, had slammed into the flat-bed truck crammed with black migrant farm workers en route to a bean field, causing the flat-bed truck to catch fire.
In Raleigh, the State Senate this date passed, on the third reading, a change in the state's tax structure. Having already passed the State House, the bill had become law. Passage of it represented a major triumph for Governor Luther Hodges because it embodied changes in the corporate income tax structure which had formed the cornerstone of his drive to bring new industry to the state. The Senate approved the bill by a vote of 44 to 2. Under its changes, the general fund collections in the next fiscal year were expected to total nearly 239 million dollars, and the following year, were expected to total 246.5 million dollars. The major change in the bill was a revision in the corporate income tax allocation formula, which would reduce state revenues by about 14 million dollars during the biennium. It also provided for tax reductions for motion picture theaters, bus companies and installment paper dealers.
In Greensboro, N.C., there were two young heroes this date and a 13-year old boy who was glad about it, having fallen while riding his bicycle the previous day. He had screamed when he saw blood spurting from an artery, attracting his mother and two brothers, ages 12 and 10. Using a stick and a handkerchief, the brothers had applied a tourniquet below his right shoulder until an ambulance arrived. He needed surgery to repair the cut artery, tendons and nerves in his wrist. The ambulance driver said that if the bleeding had not been stopped, the boy would have been dead by the time they arrived. The doctor said that it would have been a matter of only a few minutes before he had died. His two brothers attributed the deed to their Boy Scout training and quick thinking, both saying that they had not done anything much.
In Providence, R.I., a 20-year old man was brought into court the previous August 25 on a charge of reckless driving, and the judge had sent him home because he was wearing "sloppy" clothes and ordered him to return the following morning. He had not returned until the previous day. When the judge asked him why he had not returned in a timely fashion, he responded that he still had the same clothes on. The judge fined him $100 plus costs and said that the fine would have been $50 if he had appeared at the correct time.
In Gaylord, Mich., a 66-year old lumber company executive and a member of the local school board would graduate from high school this night. He had dropped out of school during his senior year in 1909 to help in his father's print shop and had never returned until the previous fall.
In Washington, the National Spelling
Bee began this date, with 64 participating spellers from all over the
country. The first to fall was a 13-year old boy from Massachusetts
who had misspelled "medallion" with only one "l".
(He did not receive a double shot of his baby's love before arriving
at the Bee.) A 13-year old girl from Wisconsin had also fallen by the
wayside, misspelling "foreword" as "forward". In
the second round, a 14-year old girl from South Carolina and a
13-year old girl from North Carolina had been eliminated when the
South Carolina girl placed only one "g" in "aggrieve",
while the North Carolina girl had misspelled "interim" as
"interem"—apparently conflating the interval of sleep most conducive to dreaming with the time between one event and another, producing a neologistic portmanteau. A 12-year old girl from West Virginia had almost
been eliminated by spelling "ordnance" with an "i",
leaving the stage in tears. But it was subsequently determined that
the word had been called out of order and was stricken. The girl then
returned and was able to spell correctly "metaphor". (They
should have asked her to provide a metaphor for "ordnance"
to stay in the contest. Well, you think of one for her.) There were
40 girls and 27 boys left in the finals—which doesn't seem possible,
since there were only 64 to start the contest, but it measures
spelling ability rather than counting ability, and so perhaps they
were able to sneak three new ones in somewhere without the judges
noticing. The ultimate winner would have to spell the last word
missed and then spell correctly a new one—and then provide an
appropriate metaphor for "ordnance". Oh, say, can you see?
On the editorial page, "A Ghastly Accident & a Grim Lesson" finds that the collision the previous day between the flat-bed truck and a tractor-trailer resulting in 19 deaths of itinerant laborers, had a grim lesson for all persons in the state, that highway accidents had to be fought with the same determination directed against disease or any other scourge, reflected not only in the laws and the courts, but in the safety consciousness of everyone who drove a vehicle on the public streets and highways.
The precise cause of the accident had not yet been stated, with the road conditions, according to the Highway Patrol, having been good with light traffic, less than an hour before the collision. The intersection had been well marked and it was not known yet whether both vehicles were in good mechanical condition. But whether the result of some mechanical failure or lapse of attention on the part of a driver, a quiet highway had become a place of mass slaughter.
It finds that the odds were that whatever the flaw which had caused the accident, it could have been avoided.
It indicates that the Legislature had refused again at the session to pass a motor vehicle inspection law designed to get rid of dangerous vehicles, the reason having been a combination of its own timidity and its knowledge of public impatience with traffic restraints. The Legislature had been reluctant even to approve the use of unmarked Highway Patrol cars, needed to break up organized racing on the public highways.
It finds that while it was not possible to pinpoint any particular law which might have prevented the tragedy, more strict legislation and sterner courts would have to be the basis of public respect for the highways and consciousness that highway accidents were as deadly as a disease. "The lesson of the horror at Fayetteville must not be forgotten."
"City Streets: Plan First, Build Later" indicates that the City Council ought waste no time in approving the City traffic engineer's proposal for a master traffic survey of the city, a necessary first step toward making city streets serve their purpose of being fast, efficient and safe arteries of movement of vehicles and people.
It suggests that if Herman Hoose, the traffic engineer, had been around when the streets had originally been laid out, there would not be the headaches for motorists at present.
The survey consisted primarily of interviewing motorists on various streets to find out where they came from and where they were going, thus able to locate streets to move traffic and direct, unchecked lines.
With funds becoming available from the large Federal road-building program, it was imperative to have such a survey for Charlotte to obtain its share of the Federal money. Officials, before making the grants, would require proof that the money would be spent wisely and effectively, and the city had to be ready with the proof.
"Waldo Cheek: The Loss of a Leader" indicates that the sudden death of Waldo Cheek the previous day from a heart attack had cost the newspaper a good neighbor, as his office was only a few doors away, and had cost Charlotte and the state a valuable, public-spirited citizen. It had also cut short a remarkable career.
At 44, Mr. Cheek had earned an enviable reputation for energetic and effective leadership both in private business and public service. He had risen from being a representative of one insurance firm to the presidency of another, marked by rapid growth and expansion under his direction. Prior to that time, he had served with distinction as State Insurance commissioner, and was known for his interest in local political affairs, at the time of his death, having been treasurer of the Mecklenburg County Democratic Party. His interest in education had led to his membership on the board of trustees of Wake Forest College.
"Waldo Cheek was a young and capable leader in a young and capable metropolis. The metropolis will miss him."
"A Tailored Role for Grandpa Truman" finds that former President Truman had come into a job for which he was demonstrably well-suited, that being his recent ascension to the role of grandfather. Always previously, there had been questions. As an artillery officer, Captain Truman was likely the target of occasional charges from the ranks below that he could not aim a gun for his poor eyesight. Captains, it finds, inevitably became the subject of gripes. As a haberdasher, he had been a failure, as no one was ever allowed to forget. As a county official, U.S. Senator and Vice-President, he had naturally taken his lumps from political opponents. And, it finds, when he had become President, the roof had fallen in.
Though his own initial doubts about his qualifications for the Presidency had faded under his determination to do the job, the doubts of his opponents and some members of his own party had only increased with time, and in some quarters, his accidental ascension to the Presidency upon the death of President Roosevelt had been bitterly bemoaned even to the present time.
But it finds no doubt that he would make a fine grandfather. "Of the many strong drives in a firm-jawed personality, none is more prominent than his devotion to home and family ties. It was a devotion that sometimes provoked national uproars, memorably in the case of the letter he fired off to the music critic who didn't like Margaret's singing. But if they were shocked by his forgetfulness of presidential dignity, many Americans were pleased by his display of sturdy parental pride."
It finds that there would be no fireworks in his new role as grandfather, but that there would be a great deal of new fondness both between the former President and his new grandson and between the former President and his fellow countrymen.
A piece from the Washington Post & Times Herald, titled "Tempest in a Geritol Bottle", finds that somehow the conductors of television quiz programs, which offered tremendous rewards for scraps of irrelevant information, continued to make embarrassing trouble for their sponsors and networks by pronouncing as wrong answers those which were technically right, and vice versa.
The latest example had occurred on
"Twenty One"
Mr. Snodgrass, as challenger, received the question first, and responded by naming the sacrum, at which point he was disqualified and not permitted therefore to name the other four divisions. Mr. Bloomgarden then rattled off "sacral, thoracic, lumbar, and coccyx", all of which save the last, the piece notes, were adjectives.
In consequence, the phones began ringing at NBC headquarters, with mad, indignant callers indicating that it had been unfair to disqualify Mr. Snodgrass for saying "sacrum" instead of "sacral", and that Mr. Bloomgarden should also have been disqualified for saying "coccyx", a noun, instead of "coccygeal", an adjective. There were also some calls from those proficient in Latin who pointed out that "sacrum" was really an adjective. It hopes there were also some calls from embittered pedestrians complaining that the os sacrum, or sacred bone, was no longer as sacred as it should be, "especially to motorists advancing around corners on right or left-hand turns."
Drew Pearson again discusses dictator Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, sometimes called the "Caesar of the Caribbean", and how he had obtained an increase of his quota for sugar imports into the U.S., at the expense of Louisiana, the Rocky Mountain states, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Mexico and Peru. As Mr. Pearson had discussed earlier in the week, he had ingratiated himself to the President's brother-in-law, Colonel Gordon Moore, the son-in-law of Secretary of State Dulles, Robert Hinshaw, and the former assistant Secretary of State for Latin American affairs, Henry Holland.
Although the State Department had recommended an increased sugar quota, it would be up to Congress to authorize it, and so the proposal had been sent to the House Agriculture Committee for action. Normally, that Committee hesitated to increase foreign sugar quotas because it hurt American sugar beet and cane sugar growers. But shortly before the vote, Sr. Trujillo had chartered a Pan American Clipper to fly Committee members to the Dominican Republic, where they were the guests of El Presidente at a ritzy hotel on the seashore, toured the island in style and stopped at such places as Boca Chica, a fancy seaside resort, Hotel Hamaca, an exclusive beach club hotel located on a natural, three-mile long lagoon. They had been wined and dined by everyone from El Presidente down, and whizzed around the island in an 81-car caravan with a police escort.
The chairman of the Committee, Harold Cooley of North Carolina, had been too busy to go along, but he had sent his sister, along with his son and daughter-in-law, instead. Mr. Pearson lists the other members of the Committee who had accepted the invitation. They had returned from their feted trip and voted for a large sugar increase for El Presidente, almost doubling the Dominican Republic's sugar quota the previous year, generating millions of dollars in personal profit for dictator Trujillo. Other members of Congress had also taken free trips to the Dominican Republic as guests of El Presidente, and had returned as apologists for his dictatorship. That list included Senator Olin Johnston of South Carolina, Congresswoman Katharine St. George of New York, and Congressmen Don Jockson of California and Bernard Kearney of New York. Some of them had been provided high decorations by the Dominican Government, which they had accepted despite the protests of Representative Charles Porter of Oregon.
Republican Congressmen did not know that the Secret Service had run a security check on the President's food prior to an impromptu box luncheon, with the President and House Minority Leader Joseph Martin being handed specially marked boxes containing chicken, potato salad, etc., which had been carefully checked for possible poison. What they did know was that the President had never exuded more political charm or savvy than at that meeting, which if he had done so a couple of months earlier, he might have won his battle over the budget, but probably would not at the current late date. The budget battle had not been mentioned specifically at the meeting, but the President had talked about practically everything else, from his golf game to the farm program, making a point of calling most of the Republican Congressmen by their first names. He addressed Congressman Patrick Hillings of California, suggesting that he had put on some weight, to which Mr. Hillings said that he had put on a few pounds, guessing that it was the result of the Eisenhower prosperity.
Marquis Childs, in Blind River, Ontario, tells of the region seeming to be a long way from the cities where the present struggle for power was centered, a principal figure in which was Canadian minister for external affairs, Lester Pearson, whose statesmanship had been central to the U.N. the prior fall in the Suez crisis, having originated the concept of the U.N. Emergency Force, which had gradually brought order to the chaos in the Middle East.
Now, in advance of the election in Canada, Mr. Pearson was being challenged because he had spent so much time on international problems that his opponent, Conservative Merton Mulligan, accused him of neglecting the people at home, whom he represented in the Canadian House of Commons, in Algoma East, with its booming uranium camp. Because of his prestige, he had been pressured to speak to 60 constituencies all across the country and it remained to be seen whether that prestige would pull him through in his home district. Most believed it would but there were many imponderables.
For the first time in Canada's political history, an undercover campaign was attempting to place a pro-Communist label on Mr. Pearson, one consequence of the suicide of Herbert Norman, the Canadian Ambassador to Egypt, following the Senate Internal Security subcommittee's action in reviving an old, discredited story that Mr. Norman had Communist associations. A "weird document" attributed to the Christian Laymen's League, a propaganda organization akin to that of Gerald L. K. Smith in the U.S., speaking of treason and conspiracy, had been mailed to every voter. (Query what other, latter day group does such activity suggest.)
It was believed that the tactic would backfire if only because of its temperateness. Mr. Pearson was fighting hard against his critics, who claimed he had lost the common touch for his long association with kings, prime ministers and ambassadors.
The Liberal Government in Ottawa had just announced that federal mortgage regulations would be relaxed to enable more homes to be built in Elliot Lake, a booming uranium town, and a dock was to be built by the Government at nearby Cutler on Lake Huron, with Cutler slated to be able, at completion in 1959 of the St. Lawrence Seaway, to accommodate ocean-going vessels, enabling another transformation of what until recently had been a vast wilderness.
The British had announced recently that they were splitting with the U.S. regarding trade with Communist China, and Mr. Pearson had said in a speech that he thought that position was more "realistic" than the American stance. In the trade talks in Paris, Canada had sought to effectuate a compromise between the British and American positions. The ultraconservative Toronto Globe and Mail had assailed Mr. Pearson for not having long since followed the British lead regarding China and for having bowed to the U.S. in refusing recognition of Communist China.
Mr. Pearson remained a dispassionate thinker, indicating his belief that 22 years was too long for any government to remain in power, that a healthy democracy should produce a workable alternative. Yet, he wanted to win more intensely on this occasion than at any time before, if only because of the nature of the attack against him. Those who saw him as the next Liberal leader and prime minister, succeeding the elderly Louis St. Laurent, were working hard to see that he was returned to his seat in the election the ensuing Monday, and with as large a majority as possible.
Barry Bingham, writing in the Louisville Courier-Journal, indicates that there was a certain masochism or need for atonement for sin at work when people chose to sit for a lecture, something which had been a part of the intellectual fabric of the country since at least the mid-19th Century, when Charles Dickens had noted, while lecturing in Boston: "One lecture treads so quickly on the heels of another, that none are remembered; and the course of this month may be safely repeated the next, with its charm of novelty unbroken, and its interest unabated."
Mr. Bingham suggests that each organization selected a program chairman who was responsible for finding speakers for every meeting throughout the year, with some perfunctory talk each year about obtaining speakers who had something worthwhile to say, but only mentioned at the start of the season or when there was an attempt by the harried chairman to land "some special oratorical fish on his bent and battered hook". It soon became obvious that they needed to get a speaker, any speaker, to fill the void between "the removal of the last rattling ice cream—and the liberated rush for the check room." He finds that women usually were concerned with the theme of obtaining speakers who had a "message" for the audience, with the subject of the message being inconsequential. Men tended to talk of obtaining a "dynamic" speaker, but the resulting speech usually followed the same pat formula, involving "a good but not too racy joke at the start, a seasoning of personal anecdote, and a conclusion that invokes civic virtue, or contribution to a worthy cause, or both."
Nearly every speaker talked too long on nearly every occasion. He indicates that he had once spoken so long to an audience of defenseless women that his leg had gone to sleep such that when he shifted his weight to give his peroration, he fell flat on the floor.
Former housing administrator Wilson Wyatt had given a speech which had been recorded, and he decided to listen to it at home one evening to check his pronunciation and delivery. But by the time the recording had run for only two minutes, he fell asleep in his chair.
One of the most tedious speakers among Senators was Alexander Smith, who had once undertaken to debate Henry Clay, ending an interminable harangue by pointing at the Kentucky Senator and saying: "You, sir, speak for the present generation, but I speak for posterity." Senator Clay responded, "Yes, and you seem resolved to speak until the arrival of your audience."
He finds that society had arrived at the point described in a Scottish proverb: "When all men speak, no man hears." He admits that there were a few speakers who could captivate audiences and even influence their opinions. He indicates that he did not suggest that all public speaking ought be banned for the coming season, but proposes that the weekly talk become the monthly talk, to save time and tedium. He suggests that some organization sponsor a "Non-Lecture Series" for the coming year, with a dozen dates selected and tickets sold for those evenings, with the subscribers then able to spend those nights at home watching television or engaging in some other harmless vice, with no limit on the number of tickets sold, as no lecture hall would have to be provided. He expresses confidence that such a series would be heavily subscribed and would show a nice profit for some worthy charity, indicating that he would purchase the first ticket.
A letter writer indicates that as she wrote she was thinking of several people, and one in particular who had recently died, having expected to retire soon to enjoy life. She finds that the death of the loved one and their loss had been heaven's gain. She indicates that people should let their lives be a shining light to others and that if they could bear someone's burden, it would lighten their own, and if kind words were spoken to someone who was blue and troubled, a person would be happier for having made someone else feel better. She says that she was told of a man who had died and left thousands of dollars to his wife, that she was getting old and would soon die, when there were many things she could do to help others and be happy. She finds that it would be too late when God called, that "many could and would be happier if they spent more time spreading kindness and love and making a happier life for everyone."
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.