The Charlotte News
Monday, April 6, 1959
FIVE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Moscow that the Soviet Union had charged on Sunday that a U.S. plane had deliberately violated regulations of the West Berlin air corridor on March 27 with the intent to worsen East-West relations on the eve of a foreign ministers conference. The note published by the Soviet news agency Tass had been handed to the U.S. Embassy on Saturday, just as American authorities in Germany had been rejecting a Soviet complaint that a U.S. C-130 transport had created a hazard by flying too high. The note raised the issue to a formal diplomatic level after previously the argument had been confined to the four-power Air Safety Center in Berlin. The note said that the C-130, which had been buzzed by Soviet jets in the Berlin corridor on March 27, had violated flight regulations by coming in at an altitude of 20,000 feet. It accused the U.S. of sending the high-flying planes out of "a desire to prejudice conditions for the meeting of foreign ministers or even to wreck the agreement on negotiating between East and West." It said that the Soviet Union had allowed "nothing to happen that would be liable to hamper the situation on the eve of the negotiations, but is doing everything to make the negotiations easier." The note, as broadcast by Moscow radio, contained no warning of any action which the Soviets might take should high altitude flights to Berlin continue. Soviet authorities in Germany contended that the Western powers had no right to fly planes in and out of isolated West Berlin at a higher altitude than 10,000 feet. U.S. officials argued that no legal ceiling existed. The West was reported to be determined to establish its rights to fly to West Berlin at any altitude it chose, particularly in case another airlift of supplies to the city might become necessary, as in 1948-49, to break a potential Soviet blockade of the city. The Soviet note renewed earlier complaints by the Russians made to the Berlin Air Safety Center regarding the flight of the C-130.
In Washington, the results of the three-day NATO Council meeting, held to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the founding of the organization, had stiffened the President's resolve not to be stampeded into a propaganda-style summit conference with the Russians, according to U.S. officials on Sunday. Those officials said that they were surprised and heartened by the firm "no nonsense" support given to the U.S. position on Berlin and a summit meeting by smaller NATO nations which could be expected to bear the brunt of any Soviet military attack. They mentioned specifically the position taken by Greece, Denmark, Norway and Belgium at the meeting, which had concluded on Saturday. They said that those countries had provided unwavering support to the American view that a "Big Four" summit conference ought be held only if the Russians demonstrated at the forthcoming foreign ministers conference in Geneva, to start on May 11, that they were ready to negotiate in good faith. Those nations had also insisted that the Western "Big Three" ought stand firm at Geneva and make no concessions on Berlin unless the Russians made equally important concessions. U.S. officials also endorsed the view of West German Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano, who had said on a Sunday television program that the West ought be realistic and "should not expect too much" from the Geneva talks. He added: "The fact that the Soviet Union has agreed to a foreign ministers conference justifies, however, some optimism. The West will, I am sure, do everything in its power to achieve positive results at the conference…" French Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Marville and British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd, who had appeared on the same television program, also said that they believed that the foreign ministers conference would be followed by a summit meeting of the heads of state with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
Labor Secretary James Mitchell had suggested on Sunday that Congress conduct a full-scale investigation of illegal political contributions from "slush funds" set up by unions and other groups. He opposed including in a labor reform bill a ban on use of union funds for political purposes because "this is a matter far beyond labor reform legislation." He had made the statement on a television program, appearing with Senator Kenneth Keating of New York, objecting to the labor reform bill co-sponsored by Senators John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Sam J. Ervin of North Carolina, and another bill sponsored by Senator John McClellan of Arkansas. He said that the former bill did not go far enough and that the latter had gone too far. His proposed inquiry would examine "illegal support of candidates by slush funds and funds from various sources." He said that he was sure that "in some cases, money has been spent illegally" by unions for political purposes, but he criticized such spending regardless of who was responsible. He said that it would be unfortunate in the country if money became the sole criteria for whether or not a person was eligible for Federal office, and that it applied whether the money came "from unions, from management, from rich families." Predicting that Congress would eventually pass a labor reform bill along the lines of the Administration's proposals, he said that the Kennedy-Ervin bill did not hit hard enough at labor racketeering.
In Washington, it was reported that a private study of Federal budget prospects, prepared for the Committee for Economic Development, a research organization of businessmen and educators, by Dr. Otto Eckstein, a Harvard University economist, had suggested on Sunday that taxpayers might have to wait five years for a surplus large enough to permit any significant tax cut. The report indicated that Government costs would climb steadily between 1960 and 1968, even if rigid economy was enforced. By 1962, however, Federal revenues might begin to exceed spending provided full employment was achieved and maintained. The study tended to show that the President probably would be disappointed in his hope for a balanced budget in fiscal 1960, the year which would start the following July 1. A rare balance was possible two years hence, according to the calculations, and a 2.5 billion dollar surplus was anticipated by 1964. The latter figure was the minimum surplus which Administration officials in the past had suggested would permit a general tax reduction, though only a modest one. The finances of state and local governments, however, would be deteriorating while the Federal budgets improved, according to the report of Dr. Eckstein.
In Wellington, New Zealand, a crowd of 40,000 had packed the Athletic Park on Sunday to hear the first appearance by evangelist Billy Graham in the New Zealand capital after drawing record crowds at Auckland. More than 2,000 persons had come forward to make "decisions for Christ", bringing the total for the New Zealand crusade to nearly 10,000. The Reverend Graham told the crowd that the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization conference presently being held in Wellington illustrated the sickness of the world, but that efforts for a cure were in vain unless mankind returned to Christ. Prime Minister Walter Nash had been among those who had braved the biting autumn wind to hear the evangelist, who had accepted an invitation by New Zealand churches to undertake an extended crusade in 1962-63 in the country. Thirteen of 120 prisoners in a Christchurch jail, who heard the sermon via telephone hookup, had made decisions for Christ. Sixty thousand persons had attended the evangelist's final meeting in Auckland on Saturday night and crusade officials said that 3,684 of those had stepped forward. The evangelist said in an interview after the meeting that he might take a break from evangelism and return to Auckland as a tourist. He said that they had a beautiful city and he would love to come and live there, that they did not do enough advertising, that never had they had such a successful visit in such a short time, adding that it was not him but rather was "the doing of the Lord". The evangelist would return to the U.S. in mid-June by way of Europe, revisiting Germany, where he said he had one of his greatest successes. He would also tour Africa.
In Jessup, Md., it was reported that 34 inmates had escaped on Sunday from a rehabilitation center for mentally defective criminals, according to police. The mass break had occurred in the evening and about a dozen prisoners had been recaptured within two hours. Police and some firemen from six counties and military police from Fort George Meade had been called out to reinforce local authorities and state troopers in combing a 20-mile area around the institution for the remaining escaped patients. A spokesman for the Maryland State Police said that some of the patients, most of whom were in their late teens and early twenties, could be considered dangerous. A warning had been broadcast to motorists in the area not to pick up hitchhikers and make sure that keys were removed from parked cars.
In Charlotte, it was reported that The News, the largest afternoon newspaper in the Carolinas, had been sold on Sunday to the Knight Publishing Co., owner of the Charlotte Observer. The announcement had been made by News publisher, Thomas L. Robinson. He explained that the sale involved the physical assets and goodwill of the newspaper and that the Charlotte News Publishing Co., of which he was president, would remain in existence pending liquidation. James L. Knight, president of Knight Publishing Co., pledged to build The News into an even stronger newspaper "with an expanded content of news and editorials and features, and likewise a newspaper which retains its distinctive personality and its independent editorial philosophy." He announced the appointment of Brodie Griffith as editor and general manager of the newspaper. Mr. Griffith had formerly been the executive editor and more recently the general manager of the newspaper. Mr. Griffith in turn said that two other top executives of the newspaper would continue in their present roles, Cecil Prince as editorial page editor, with the new title of associate editor, and Richard L. Young, Jr., to keep his present title and duties as managing editor with supervision over the news department. Mr. Griffith also said that the Monday edition of the newspaper would be produced in The Observer's plant on South Tryon St. The mechanical force of The Observer would be considerably augmented, as would, to a lesser degree, its advertising department and business office. Pending rearrangement of The Observer plant, news editorial and circulation departments of The News would continue to function at their present location.
Mr. Griffith had been for 35 years a top executive of The News. Mr. Knight said that he would have full charge of the news and editorial departments and large responsibilities for other operations of the newspaper. He described him as "one of the finest newspaper executives in the South" and expressed his delight that he was remaining with the newspaper under its new ownership. He said that Mr. Griffith would be provided the resources to develop one of the best afternoon newspapers in the South. Mr. Griffith had been born in 1899 in Saluda County in South Carolina, had served in the U.S. Army between 1917 and 1919 as a sergeant in the 118th Infantry, 30th (Old Hickory) division, which had seen service in France. He had begun his newspaper work in 1919 as a reporter for the Greensboro Record, had gone to the Greensboro News in 1921 as a reporter and was later state editor and finally sports editor there. He had come to The News in October, 1923 as state editor, becoming managing editor between 1925 and 1948, and executive editor between 1948 and 1955, elected vice-president, secretary and a director of the Charlotte News Publishing Co. in September, 1955, and appointed general manager of the newspaper on August 1, 1955. He was currently serving as a director of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce, the Charlotte Merchants Association and the Family and Children's Service, had been a member for 20 years of the Salvation Army Advisory Board, and president of the Carolinas Carrousel holiday celebration in November. He had been editor of the North Carolina Legion News for 20 years. He was also a member of Joppa Lodge of the Masonic Order, York Rite, Oasis Temple of the Shrine and Pritchard Memorial Baptist Church, where he was teacher of the Brotherhood Bible Class, chairman of the Church finance board and chairman of the pulpit committee. Among other groups of which he was a member were the North Carolina Press Association, the Charlotte Executives Club, the Newcomer Society, the Charlotte City Club, the Mecklenburg Historical Association, the American Legion and the Forty & Eight, the latter having to do with the Old Hickory division. In the past, Mr. Griffith had been a member of the City Zoning Board of Adjustment, a member and chairman of the City Planning Board, a member of the American Newspaper Editors and the Associated Press Managing Editor's Association, president of the North Carolina Associated Press Club and of the North Carolina News Council. Mr. Prince was a native of High Point, had attended the High Point City schools, Pasadena Junior College in 1940-41, UNC, in 1941-42 and 1946-48, where he had received an A.B. degree in journalism. He had studied engineering at the University of Maryland for a short time during his World War II Army service. He had served with the U.S. Army in Europe between 1942 and 1945 as a combat infantryman and staff sergeant squad leader with the 14th Armored and 45th Infantry Divisions. He had been awarded the Bronze Star in 1945 and from 1952 to 1956 had been a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserve. He had begun his journalistic career as a reporter for the Greensboro Record between 1948 and 1953, where he covered government and politics. He was an editorial writer and associate editor for the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville in 1953 and 1954 and had joined the staff of The News in 1954 as an editorial writer. Since 1955, he had been in charge of the editorial page, first as associate editor and later as editor. He had won third place in the North Carolina Press Association's editorial writing contest in 1955, taking both first and second places in 1956, and had won first place again in 1958. He was a member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the National Conference of Editorial Writers and the North Carolina Editorial Writers Conference, having served as chairman of the latter association in 1958-59. He was also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Charlotte Community College System, a director of the Charlotte chapter of the American Red Cross, the Charlotte Symphony Society and the Mental Health Association of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. Mr. Young was a native of Charlotte, having been born there in 1922, and was son of a veteran News City Hall reporter, Richard L. Young, Sr. He attended the Charlotte City schools and UNC. He had begun his newspaper career as a reporter and desk editor for the Kannapolis Independent in 1941 and had been a reporter and desk editor for the Shelby Daily Star before entering military service with the U.S. Army in November, 1942. He had served until January, 1946 with a Signal Corps operational battalion and was discharged as a sergeant. He had then returned to the Shelby Daily Star as news editor. There is more about the transition in ownership of the newspaper on inside pages.
In Hollywood, it was reported that the 31st annual Academy Award show would be the biggest ever, taking place this night at the Pantages Theater. In the two-hour telecast, the longest in Academy history, there would be 100 stars appearing. After a ten-year exile, two-time award winner Ingrid Bergman would return. There was a wide open race in the major categories. But one anticipated dramatic element, the appearance of both Elizabeth Taylor and Debbie Reynolds on the same show, had disappeared when Ms. Reynolds, just having returned from Europe, said that she would not be present because she had not had time to get ready. Ms. Taylor would be accompanied by Eddie Fisher, who was divorced from Ms. Reynolds, and would soon wed Ms. Taylor. No one was sure who the winners of the awards would be. In the past, a trade paper poll of the Academy voters had predicted the outcome, but the paper had bowed to Academy arguments that the poll had put a damper on the affair for the losers and so it had been discontinued.
Whether, from undue extravagance in costume selection, exceeding the national budget
On the editorial page, "What Charlotte Needs Is 'Hard Choices'" indicates that with City Council member Martha Evans having entered the mayoral race, Charlotte voters would be faced with at least one appropriately difficult decision, as incumbent Mayor James Smith had already announced his candidacy for re-election.
But unless some weight was added to other local races, the silence of the campaign was likely to be broken only by the innocent snorers of the electorate.
It seemed recent that the Council was being damned and praised with impartial fervor by highly articulate spokesmen everywhere, with a great amount of free advice having been offered at the corner store, around the bridge table, at civic meetings and along Tryon Street. But now, everyone appeared silent.
In the race for City Council, the field was not small, but there was no assurance of real competitive ferment, and there were no stimulating ideas or earnest debate. Noise alone contributed nothing to political health, but the clash of opinion and competition of ideas were essential to good government, to enable voters to vote intelligently. It also believes that no incumbent was so good and indispensable that his policies and ideas did not deserve a fair and public test, that it was only when such tests were lacking that abuses developed.
With such metropolitan growth in Charlotte, complacency was the worst possible sentinel. The time to worry about a country, state or community was not when the people were scrapping among themselves, as that was when democracy functioned best, but rather when all was "absolutely, deadeningly and boringly quiet."
"Farm Groups Maintain Three-Way Split" indicates that while Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson had come under great fire, it was a pity that the farmers' groups could not come to a definite conclusion about remedies. The largest organization, the American Farm Bureau Federation, solid in the South, wanted gradually to eliminate government controls. Directly opposed was the National Farmers Union, which sought a stronger role by government. Stuck between the two was the National Grange, the oldest group, which asserted itself for "self-help, farmer, managed programs" and government help, "only if needed".
The slogans of the organizations were also interesting, the Grange saying that it was "America's only rural family fraternity", the Farmers Union calling itself the "nation's one farmers' farm organization", and the Farm Bureau claiming "three out of every four organized farmers."
It finds that it might be traditional that farmers were going to disagree with everyone else and most vocally with other farmers. But with all of their lobbying power, with farm lobbies having spent nearly $280,000 the previous year, the three divisions still went their separate ways.
It suggests that in a sense, it may have kept Mr. Benson in office, as he could point to almost any part of his program and show that some group opposed it. It urges that what farmers needed to produce was a central council from the big three farm organizations, forming a united front to produce quicker results, save lobbying expense and bring farm problems into much clearer focus.
"Life in America" indicates that the La Plata Volunteer Fire Department in Maryland had lost half its members recently when they had admitted setting many of the fires they had later extinguished. The Department had used teenage members to fill its ranks and had lost them after they admitted the arson to skip school exams.
"A Spectacular Event for Summer" finds a practical reason for the writing of How To Build a Swamp, published by Haunted House, 662 pages long and selling for $19.98. It indicates that it had decided long earlier that it had to write with knowledge, hence its creation of Heckhole Swamp.
Now that the volume was 76th on the non-fiction list with an assured future, one goal had been accomplished, and since it had a swamp, it was ready to promote another sure-fire attraction during the current year, the first annual Lowland Games, to be held in the swamp.
Athletic events would include the 50-yard swim, tossing the gator, putting the shot glass, nitpicking for editorial writers and an endurance hike up Grandmother Knoll. There would be singing of traditional songs, "Sweet Bagels from Lox", "Flood Gently, Sweet Catawba", "Lowland Ladder", "Panetella, Robert Byrnes?" and "Bonnie Yale Lock". There would also be dancing, the lowland freshwater reel, cottonmouth slither, bull bat swoop, high-cotton reach and the golfer's shag-bag. From the beaches would come the Original Drums and Sandpipers, the mountains providing the K'woodie Pipe Band, and it was hopeful of getting the Northeast Dismounted Police Kazoos.
All of it would produce "a real wowser of a day". It adds that to make the faithful feel at home, it could only pray for rain to produce the timeless atmosphere.
It actually produces a pretty fair blueprint for what would transpire at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in Bethel, N.Y., a decade hence.
"No Letter Home
A piece from the New York Times, titled "A New Nation Is Born", finds it easy to imagine how everyone would feel if a great new nation, with an entirely new population of about 90 million, were to appear on the face of the earth. Yet, that was approximately what had occurred in 1957 and 1958, as reported by the Population Reference Bureau, Inc.
The rate of increase rested on an annual world population growth of about 1.6 percent, which, in turn, was based on an increase in birth rates and a drastic decrease in death rates. Modern medicine and sanitation had almost everywhere increased life expectancy. In all countries of the Western world, there had been a dramatic lengthening of life since the turn of the century. In the U.S., for example, a baby born around 1900 could count on an average life of a little under 50 years, whereas at present, according to the latest life insurance actuarial tables, the figure was a little over 68 years. The average death rates in the underdeveloped countries had also dropped precipitously. The United Nations Yearbook reported an average decline of over 40 percent in the death rate in 23 countries between the 1930's and the 1950's.
It finds that one could go on indefinitely analyzing such figures, but what they pointed to was a healthier and more vigorous world population, together with an increasing pressure on the means of subsistence. Thomas Malthus, it suggests, might have taken some satisfaction, not so much in what had occurred, as in what could occur. Current predictions had put the world population at close to 7 billion by the year 2000, if present trends continued. Yet, as the Population Reference Bureau had pointed out, "the world has not begun to feed, house, clothe and educate its present 2.8 billion people properly."
It indicates that mankind had its work cut out for it, that one way of reducing population was famine, pestilence and war, recourses toward which the present world sometimes seemed to be drifting. But there were better ways, a lasting peace, goodwill among men and all of the scientific knowledge possessed to supply mankind's needs.
Drew Pearson indicates that as Senators returned to work the following day, freshman Senator Steve Young of Ohio would not be popular, as he had set a precedent by publishing all of his stock holdings and selling some, long advocated by another unpopular Senator, Wayne Morse of Oregon.
He indicates that the question of where a Senator's pocketbook interest stopped and the public interest began, had come to an active head in 1946 when the column had revealed that Senator Elmer Thomas of Oklahoma had been speculating on the cotton market at the same time he had been making Senate speeches influencing the price of cotton. Senator Thomas had denied the claim and had called Mr. Pearson a liar. But official publication by the Agriculture Department of commodity trading had shown that Senator Thomas was speculating in various commodities which he influenced as chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. The voters of Oklahoma had defeated the Senator, but nothing was done in the Senate about further conflicts of interest.
He had talked to Senator Morse and Senator George Aiken of Vermont about a "truth-in-senate-securities act", somewhat similar to the "truth-in-securities act" which created the Securities & Exchange Commission. The two Senators had introduced resolutions to that end, requiring all Senators to make public their various holdings. But nothing had happened and senatorial courtesy, not senatorial integrity, had prevailed.
A few years later, Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma had come into the limelight by leading the battle for an act to deregulate natural gas, despite the fact that he was one of the nation's affluent independent oilmen. Some Senators felt that Senator Kerr should disqualify himself from voting on the gas bill under Senate Rule 12, which provided that any Senator having a pecuniary interest in legislation ought disqualify himself. Senator Kerr, however, had not stepped aside but rather had debated, button-holed colleagues and voted for the gas bill.
He indicates that most people did not realize it but Senator Young's stock disclosure was a sideswipe at two other Ohio Senators, John Bricker, whom he had defeated, and Frank Lausche, sometime Democrat, with whom Senator Young had refused to walk down the aisle when he had taken the oath of office.
Senator Bricker had been dubbed the "Pennsylvania Railroad Senator" because his law firm in Columbus had received an annual retainer of $35,000, while the Senator served as either chairman or ranking member of the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee with great power to influence legislation for or against the railroads. Senator Bricker had done that with brazen frankness, working against the St. Lawrence Seaway when most Ohioans were for it, with the exception of the railroads. He had also put his two administrative assistants on the Interstate Commerce Commission where they would help regulate the railroads. One, Robert Minor, had even jumped from the ICC to be vice-president of the New York Central.
Thus when Senator Young had divested himself of personal investments which were conflicting, it was in contrast to Senator Bricker's operations. It was also in contrast to Senator Lausche. When he was defeated in the gubernatorial race in 1946, he had become counsel for the New York Central at a salary of $50,000 per year. When he was elected Governor again, he helped to put through an axle mileage tax on trucks, which greatly benefited the railroads. When he became a Senator, he was appointed to the Interstate Commerce Committee, which passed on railroad legislation.
Walter Lippmann, in the first of four reports on the situation in Berlin, indicates that during March he had visited London, Paris, Bonn, Berlin and Rome to learn how the European allies approached the coming negotiations with "Mr. K." He points out that even in ordinary times, interviews of the type which he had conducted would have to be off the record, for at the start of any negotiation no sensible and responsible official would make public statements about his first and final terms.
In the West, where there were free newspapers as well as parliaments and elections, a statesman could not safely do what Premier Nikita Khrushchev did often, varying his tactics and maneuvering about in public. For if a democratic statesman spoke out, he was stuck with what he said, being judged by some influential part of his constituents as having advanced or retreated, won or lost, having had a glorious triumph or reached abject surrender. Thus, the Western democracies took refuge in large generalities which, while they satisfied the emotions, made no unalterable commitments.
The press, in such situations, had to try to tell the truth without disclosing legitimate secrets. To determine what "legitimate secrets" were, he begins with a remark made to him by a man who had recently had a long and free-swinging bout with "Mr. K." About the German question, he had said: "You Americans do not always understand that the game which is being played over Berlin and Germany is not poker but chess. In this game each player sees what pieces the other one has, and there is no bluffing about them. What is unknown is how each side will play his pieces." He finds the analogy to be apt, applying widely to the whole contest in which the allies were now engaged. When applied to the press, it might be said that their first job was to report what the pieces were on the board and where they stood, being chary of trying to spell out in advance how President Eisenhower and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, Premier Charles de Gaulle and West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer would play them.
In addition to the need for some secrecy, which was inherent in almost all negotiations, there was another element in the present situation which made it difficult to report. That was the fact that Western policy on the German question, as officially proclaimed during the previous decade, no longer represented the actual expectations and practical hopes of the principal Western European governments. They did not say it but they had come to know that the two Germanys could not be "reunited in freedom", through liquidating the Communist regime in East Germany. There were presently two German states and every responsible European statesman realized that they could not be united within the foreseeable future and under any conditions presently conceivable.
But while everyone in the know accepted that central fact, no one was prepared to proclaim it. For there were powerful internal political reasons in Western Europe, primarily and particularly in West Germany, as to why the statesmen had to shrink from the explicit public recognition of that fact. A lot had been said recently about Mr. Macmillan and the coming British general elections. Perhaps even more important from the point of view of Western policy were the coming West German elections in 1961. For if it were to transpire that the reunification of Germany had been postponed indefinitely, making it for all practical purposes no more than a dim and distant ideal, there was a fair chance that Chancellor Adenauer might be defeated by a coalition made up of those who would put German unity above all other things. That could lead to a profound alteration of the whole Western European position, leading potentially to German negotiations with Russia, to deals made at the expense of NATO and of the European common market.
That was the nightmare of the Western European governments and a compelling reason why they shrunk from any open recognition of the fact that there were at present and would long continue to be two Germanys. They were afraid that Chancellor Adenauer's position in West Germany was not strong enough to withstand the shock of such a recognition.
Mr. Lippmann indicates that in subsequent articles, he would have something to say about why German reunification had, for the foreseeable future, ceased to be practical politics and how that fact was at the root of the Berlin situation.
Joseph Alsop indicates that every so often it was pleasant to escape from the squalid puzzles of political life into the larger mysteries of life, itself, the only reason for writing about Biston Betularia, a speckled, light-colored, woods-dwelling moth which inhabited the British Isles. By night, it took wing to feed and to make love. By day, it rested on the lichen-covered trunks of its sheltering trees. Since it was colored to resemble a patch of lichen, the little moth was almost invisible to the insect-eating birds which were its natural predators.
The mystery of the moth, which had its grain of meaning for every dweller of the modern industrial world, was fairly simple as mysteries went. In all of the industrial areas of England, it had now changed into Carbonaria, its speckled, light coloration having been abandoned in favor of a novel, coal-black dress. That localized blackening of the Biston was bound to cause raised eyebrows in a nation of birdwatchers and moth-watchers.
It had prompted a formidable inquiry, described by the British biologist, H. B. D. Kettlewell, in the Scientific American. In industrial areas and non-industrial areas, the woods were full of eager Britons, all watching for the Biston with utmost fervor. At one moment, 20,000 separate moth-observations had been made by no less than 170 volunteer observers. The moth-watchers maintained that birds snatched the moths during their daytime rest on the tree trunks, whereas the birdwatchers believed that the birds only took the moths on the wing. In the end, the moth-watchers confounded the birdwatchers by taking motion pictures which proved their case.
Once the case had been proved, the mystery was unraveled, its root cause having been that since the start of the industrial revolution, according to Dr. Kettlewell, "large areas of the earth's surface have been contaminated by an insidious and largely unrecognized fallout of smoke particles." Those particles, washing down the tree trunks, tended to kill the tree-growing lichens and blacken the trunks themselves. In that manner, over huge areas of England, the conditions of life for moths had been radically altered. In the few remaining untouched haunts of coot and hern, tree trunks were not blackened and lichens still flourished, along with speckled, lichen-imitating Bistons, still invisible to the preying birds. There, they still survived.
But in all of the woods subject to smoke fallout, light-colored Bistons were condemned to early death. There, only dark-colored or black Bistons, the formerly very rare "melanistic mutants", had a good chance to survive and breed. Thus, a new process of natural selection had begun in Charles Darwin's own time, and under his nose if he had only known about it. It had caused Biston Betularia to be transformed into Biston Carbonaria in all of England's smoke-dark woods.
The question remained as to why the Biston was still so fortunately producing an occasional dark-colored or black form when the industrial revolution had finally started. Dr. Kettlewell had gotten the answer in Scotland's Black Wood of Rannoch, one of the few patches of the dark-primeval forest which covered much of prehistoric Britain. There, also, black moths were fairly common. The rare genes of black coloration which caused the Bistons to adapt to the new environment created by industrial production were in fact survivors from the time before man had begun to fell the trees.
Mr. Alsop finds something wonderfully satisfying about the story of the little moths' brisk color-adaptation to the industrial age. It appeared to say that life would still go on, somehow or other, no matter how the follies and triumphs of mankind would alter the face of the planet. But he finds also something disquieting in the vision of those imperceptibly darkening woods, and the ensuing darkening of the creatures in the woods. "Promethean man is reckless in his works, and does not stop to count their cost. The tools he now possesses are immeasurably more terrible than the tools that made the English black country. Will it be a little moth next time, or will it be some other species, that must radically adapt itself to the deep but late-perceived life-changes that the new tools of man will no doubt cause?"
Trump and his little entourage have made it abundantly plain that they don't give a damn, as long as Trump gets his golden arch dedicated to himself and his gold ballroom dedicated to himself, and is deemed by his stupid contemporaries at Fox Prop and the like to be the greatest man who ever lived, with the greatest amount of power. There is one "greatest" feat which he definitely will attain in his obese craziness before he finally passes into infamy, that being as the greediest, most megalomaniacal occupant of the White House ever, the qualities which characterize every decision he makes on a daily basis, having nothing to do with any coherent policy, whether domestic or foreign, all driven by the Trump desire to be "greatest"—when in fact he is the worst in every category of responsible and dignified leadership in the traditional sense of the occupants of the White House. Even Mr. Nixon, who, to date, prior to Trump, had brought more disgrace to the house than any previous or subsequent occupant, maintained, publicly at least, his and the Presidency's dignity, and, if not always behind the scenes, his ostensible responsibility to the American people. In the end, he had the good grace to step away semi-voluntarily, not something which Trump would ever deign to do, as that would relinquish his cherished notion of himself as the "greatest" who ever lived.
A letter writer indicates that all workers ought be free to join or not unions, lest there be abject slavery of the worst kind. They should have the right to quit work and those who wanted to work should not have the right to be interfered with by picketing "thugs", by legislation or by the courts. "Violence, beatings, rock throwing, overturning automobiles, blocking sidewalks and highways or gates of entrance or exit should not be tolerated; those who violate these fundamental rights, or engage in dynamiting homes or transportation facilities should be dealt with to the fullest extent of the law." He finds that strikes against employers were, in reality, against the public, the consumer. Token resistance usually by employers crumbled into surrender to demands, not bargaining. Wages, already high, were raised and the tab was passed on to the ultimate victim, the consumer. Usually the price increase was more than the wage increase made necessary, leaving the people caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.
Framed Edition
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