Newspapers / The Pilot (Southern Pines, … / July 9, 1954, edition 1 / Page 2
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PAGE TWO THE PILOT—Soulhern Pines. Nor^ CaroKna FRIDAY. JULY 9. 1954 Southern Pines North Carolina “In tak.ing over The Pilot no changes are contemplated. We wiH try to keep this a good papel to make a little Lney for all concerned. Where there Ln to use our influence for the public good we will try to do it. And we wiU treat everybody alike.”—James Boyd, May 23, 1941. Approaching Xhe County Honie Probleni In Johnston County, a step has been taken by the board of county comtmissioners that might well prove a starting point in the Moore County board’s problem o^ what to do about our county home. When the superintendent of the Welfare De partment in Johnston County came to the board and suggested that money could be saved for the taxpayers Eind indigent persons could get ' better care if the county home were leased to ■ competent operators as a boarding home, the ■Johnston commissioners invited the director of the adult boarding home program of -the State Department of Welfare, Mrs. Annie Mae Pem berton, to come to their July mlecting and dis cuss the progreim with them. The Johnston County welfare superintendent cited recent developments in Franklin Coun ty, where the change-over from county home to boarding home was made, with an estimated annual saving of tax mo-ney amounting to $15,- 000. Individuals in boarding homes pay for their room and board with government Old Age As sistance checks, if families, friends or others are unable to foot the bill The county’s share of an OAA check is only a few dollars a month. From the point of view of the old people themselves—a point of view that all too often is not considered in these matters—there is some pride and satisfaction in being able to pay their way, even though the payment is made with a government assistance check. In our complex modem society, it is recog nized that such payments as Social Security and Old Age Assistance are not “charity” but rather a well-deserved right. Government—^that is, the agency that works for us aU and to which we aU contribute—most step in to aid the helpless when the demands for such aid get beyond the scope and power of private generosity. The Pilot’s study of the Moore County home over the past few months has convinced us that the taxpayers of Moore County are getting very poor value for the $12,500 of their money that is poured into the county home annually. The people of Moore County are watching the commissioners to see what they propose to do about the county home. A study by the board to determine how much, under another system, could be saved for the taxpayers and how much could be done to improve care given old people and to brighten their existence, would show the people that the county home problem has not been shelved. Suggestion For Tobacco Research For the past several years. The Pilot has fol lowed with interest the research work of Dr. Robert F. Mobbs of Aberdeen, in connection with the effects of pesticides on human beings. This work covers effects resulting from di rect contact with such substances,, as when they are breathed, and also the larger, more compli cated and possibly more dangerous problem of the residues from such poisons that remain in or on the foods we eat. In Washington recently. Dr. Mobbs appeared before a Senate committee to advocate adequate safeguards against marketing of food products containing poisonous or potentially poisonous pesticide substances remaining after such sub stances were used for insect control on the product when it was growing. As a side comment, but one which drew the headlines in press reports. Dr. Mobbs suggested as a field for research a possible connection between the insecticides used on tobacco and lung cancer. Since various reports on an apparent con nection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer were made during the past year, a number of observers have speculated as to whether the cancer-causing agent is something in the tobacco itself or something that is added to it, either in the course of cultivation or dur ing manufacture. Regarding Dr. Mobb’s suggestion, The Dur ham Morning Herald, pointing out that the whole economy of that city is dependent upon tobacco, comments; “There is a basis for Dr. Mobbs’ point. During the period in which there has been an increase in the incidence <Jf lung cancer and an increase in the consumption of cigarettes, there has also been a marked increase in the use of insecti cides to kill tobacco pests. It is known that some chemicals used in pesticides cause abnor- rnal cell growth. “Most farmers are careful to schedule the use of insecticides on tobacco at a time when they will not appear on the leaf when harvested. Tobacco which shows the poison is not desir able, and buyers reduce their bids for such to bacco considera.bly. This situation, however, involves only the appearance of the leaf. Insofar as this newspaper is aware, there l\ave been no studies to determine whether there is any ab sorption of the poison into the tobacco leaf. “Dr. Mobbs’ suggestion shows how many- faceted the problem is and how many avenues of exploration call the researcher. This aspect of research, however, might be one of the first investigated.” We’d think that the tobacco companies would be eager to follow up any line of research that might eventually prove that the golden weed itself is not the culprit. ’The particular aspect of the problem pointed out by Dr. Mobbs should be one of the first to be studied in the compan ies’ much-publicized efforts to deal with the tobacco-cancer problemi Union Lee Spenee Union Lee Spence, the Carthage attorney who died last week at the age of 86, richly deserved the courtesy title he had borne for many years— “dean of the Moore County Bar.” In the case of Mr. Spence, it was used not only as recognition of seniority in years and experience, but with genuine respect for his abilities. This respect was perhaps strongest among his colleagues, the attorneys who recog nized, with professional admiration, his sheer ability as a lawyer. Among those who had only a casual acquaint ance with him, Mr. Spence was known as an honest, lively, friendly gentleman who rarely failed to drop somte word of insight or wisdom] into the most routine street-corner con versation. It is told that even in his later years, this grand old man would retire to his study and there pore over his law books and prepare his cases as avidly as a yotmg student cramming for an examination. Excellence was his aim and excellence he achieved in every case with which he was associated. He felt nothing but the best was due his clients and himself. Independence of thought was an outstanding quality Of Mr. Spence—em independence that came like a vigorous breath of fresh air from an earlier age, as in truth it did, when men put less value on confoormity, as a virtue in itself, than they do today. It is interesting, too, that Mr. Spence did not devote his abilities merely to his private prac tice, but served the county and the state in pub lic office for some 30 years, putting his shoulder to the wheel in the great forward march of North Carolina in education, health, welfare, roads and all the other developments since the early years of this century. He was elected to term after term as senator or representative from Moore County and he served the people well and faithfully. Mr, Spence’s vigor, up to the time of the short illness that took his life, was an inspira tion. He seemed indestructible physicaRy and observers marvelled as his recent appearances in court revealed no apparent tarnish on the bril liance of his mind. Of such men is the greatness Of this nation made. Point Four Street Point Four is a two-way street. It carries tech nical aid (60 million doUars of it allocated since the recent oU settlement) to Iran, among num erous countries benefited. And, notwithstand ing legitimate misgivings, it does bring back to the United States a certain amount of gratitude for information, techniques, and resources shar ed by a fortunate natiota. One heartening little expression of this senti ment has taken place in Teheran. There, in the Iranian capital, a downtown thoroughfare has been renamed Point Four Street in appreciation of what Point Four has done for a troubled coimtry. It is not long since one part of that program was the subject of a great deal of attempted ridicule in Iran. This was a project for improv ing the strain of donkeys which are the common work animals and a means of transport on Per sian hillsides. The Americans shipped in breed ing stock from! Cyprus. Communists poked fun The Public Speaking New High School Goes Up As Old Building Comes Down Seen through the trees from May St. (No. 1 highway), the old Southern Pines High School building at the left is being tom down by the Star Lumber Co. of Chicago, Ill., while at the same time work progresses on the “Phase A” xmit of the new high school whose May Street front is seen at the right. Piles of lumber from the old building can be seen in the foreground. The company is selling lumber and fixtures oh the site. Visible through the gap in the trees at left is the stage of the auditorium!, in the old building. The audi torium, which ran north and south, coimecting two wings, had not been used since 1947 when a large portion of the ceiling fell while the room was unoccupied but not long after some of the commence ment period events had taken place in the room. Other seri ous defects in the old struc ture included the boiler room and the science labora tory, neither of which met State specifications. The “Phase A” unit of the new high school fronts 57 feet on May St. and runs back 142 feet paraUel to Massachusetts Ave. Completion is expected in time for use in the school term to open in September. The “Phase B” unit will run north from Phase A, 191 feet parallel to May St., and is tentatively planned for com pletion in the fall of 1955. It Council Meetings To The Pilot: ^ Citizens, Voters, Taxpayers; ^ Where are you? Every meeting of the Town Council is important because the business transacted there affects you, the taxpayer.. To observe each of the five coimcilmen perform his duties in accordance with his oath of office is a revelation, and serves as a guide in the next election. How does each one react to the hap- m hazard, hazy or verbal agreements of past administrations? Brother, you don’t know nothin’ ’til you’ve attended the town meetings. The vacant chairs are a shocking disclosure of your pub lic interest! AN OBSERVER will be of two-story construc tion. Rooms will be reached from outside corridors. Cost of the “Phase A” por tion of the building, pictiured above, is $126,644, including architect’s fee. This part of the structure contains the heating plant that will serve both sections of the school. To tal cost of both the buildings is expected to run about $250,- 000. Grains of Sand SCHOOL HEAD SEES DANGER IN TREND Standards Of Education Must Be Upheld With BeUs On Residents of North Ridge street have been puzzled recently by the jingling of bells, like sleigh bells ^the sort associated with holly wreaths, snow drifts and Christ mas card glitter. . . Since there are still nearly 150 shopping days before the holiday and the ther mometer stands at 90 oftener than freezing, the matter became a minor mystery. A veteran former newspaper reporter who resides in the neighborhood, ever alert and curious when faced with the inexplicable, undertook to track down the mysterious chime of tinkling bells. Following are his findings: The music of the bells emen ates from the person of Miss Ter- essa Pearce, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. H. P. Pearce. It is not, as some persons believed, in celebra tion of anything in particular nor wafted from any celestial source. Miss Pearce is under two years old. ’fioo young to be a bell ringer. I The Pearces were having slight difficulties with their youngest. A sturdily built little red-head, she had developed the habit of straying away every time a win dow or door was left unguarded. The lawns of this section are un fenced and the hedges are taU enough to conceal any small run away completely, once she had got away from the home nest. The usual treatments were tried, lectures; reasoning; firmness and threats of a spanking and fmally —the harassed mother’s last re sort, a real spanking. It made no difference, Teressa vanished at every opportunity and every eve ning found the roused neighbors roaring her name and beating the brush. She was perfectly good-natured about it. When recaptured she made no protest. She snuled a sweet, mysterious smile, and placr ed her small, warm fist into any adult palm confidingly. No reproaches. No declaration of her inalienable rights under the constitution. Not a phrase or word Joe McCarthy could fasten on for investigation. But Teressa kept on vanishmg and was devilish hard to find when wanted. It was a visitor from New York who solved the problem. Miss Flofra Cooney recalled a trick from her own nursery days; Te^pssa By SEYMOUR ST. JOHN ^ 1 Headmaster of the Choate School Wallingford. Conn. ■Tf you plan for a year, plant corn; if you plan for fifty years, plant trees; if you build for eter nity, educate your children.” What a traversity we make of that age- old aphorism when educational policy is dictated by fhe weak nesses rather than the strengths of our society. It is my deep con viction that our ability or inabil ity to overcome these pressures of weakness will determine whether the future of our country holds for our children happiness or frustration, hope or despair, life or death. Two hundred years ago men were making their way to this country because of deep-seated spiritual and economic needs. Through their determination to meet the need Of their day with the best they had of wisdom, irn^ agination and labor, some of those men grew into giants. And in suc ceeding years they passed on to us a proud heritage. But with the advent of technology and conse quent shorter working days, with the growing power of our country and its apparent security in ocean ic isolation, the motivation for~a strongly disciplined American people was watered down. The will to build one’s own life gave way to the demand for govern mental support from cradle to grave; the right to individual lib erty became the right to be just like every one else; the ■ pursuit ef happiness narrowed to the avoidance of discomfort. The goals at the idea that Iran could possibly need any more jackasses. But it was no joke to Iranian farmers. They were glad to raise sturdier animals. They were glad also to have schools, irrigation works, DDT sprays, cleaner watercourses for their villages, and seed wheat which produced a 40 per cent greater yield. Technical assistance made a lot of friends in Iran at a time when Soviet Russia obviously was hoping for an opportunity there. But the greatest benefits are not solely in helping to thwart a Communist coup. They are in having established a modicum of understand ing between two civilizations, helping Persians to be beetter customers and producers, more self-reliant neighbors in a shrinking world. We hope Point Four Street has room for great numbers of well-laden Iranian donkeys. And we are not afraid that Americans by being helpful are making jackasses of themselves. —The Christian Science Monitor of freedom, individualism, strength of character, weakened to those of security, conformity, adjustment. 'Narrow Problems Studied Naturally enough, these goals are reflected in the educational system. Here is a philosophy which supports such courses as Senior Problems, whatever they may be; Consumer Education, where one may learn to buy a rug at a discount; Boy-Girl relations, 1 where one learns “How to get along with one’s date!” Note to what these courses are geared: not to a study of the tools of know ledge, nor to learning what light the wisdom of the ages throws on our present.»and future; but to a study of our narrow problems of the moment, with an eye only to immediately utilitarian solutions; they are geared to adjustment, to happiness by the direct method. Here is a quotation from what I call the adjustment school, tak en from the Bulletin of the Na tional Association of Secondary School Principals; and then a lit tle story. First the quotation: “We shall someday accept the thought that it is just as illogical to assume that every boy must be able to read as it is that each one must be able to perform on a violin, that it is no more reasonable to require that each girl shall spell well than it is that each one shall bake a good cherry pie.” Another telltale trademark of the adjustment trend appears in grading systems. “It is time the parents rose up,” writes an Okla- TALKING ABOUT McCarthy, maybe? “There are foolish and short-sighted citizens who ttijnk if we can keep Com munism out of this country, we can save ourselves from Communist conquest. They hope that if we can shut out or exile from this coimtry every Communist, every rel ative of every Communist, everyone who ever read a Communist book, everyone who ever knew or was related to anyone who was a Com munist, or everyone who ever knew or was related to any one who ever read a Com munist book, then the country is safe. Nothing could be fur ther from the truth.”—Sen ator Flanders of Vermont in commencement address at Georgia Tech, Atlanta. was hung with tiny, tinkling bella When she moves hand or foot the world knows about it, no matter how deep the grass or how thick the brush. The Pilot thinks the suggestion should be passed along for the benefit of other parents. Quite A Life! A good many people think noth ing good came out of the McCar- thy-Army hearings and we’ll go along with that. Except for one choice morsel of goodness that has come our way. Here it is: Says one fellow to another: “Say, what’s that man Riley doing these days?” Answers the other: “Oh, Riley? Why, he’s in the Army; didn’t you know? Leading the life Of Schine.” Up She Goes This wandering reporter, wan dering up here in New York, much too far away from the Sand hills, wandered down Park Ave nue recently to see an amazing sight. On the comer of the Avenue and 57th Street a building was go ing up, a 22-story building. Nothing new or amazing in that, you’ll say, but wait. Sunday night, the night before, the building was at the steel con struction stage: 22 floors of steel framework; uprights, beams, and girders; not a snitch of waU in place. Monday morning at 6 o’clock, they started on the four outside walls, using, for the ma terial, entirely aluminum. '^e window-frames, the connecting links, the flat sheets in between were all aluminum. By the time we went down there to look, at noon, 12 floors had their outside walls on. We stood on the opposite corner gawk ing with the big crowd—even New Yorkers stopped to see this—and watched the tiny figures up there, lifting the sections into place. Then we went to lunch. When we came out two more floors had been completed and the men were starting on the first step-back toward the top of the building. We spent the next hour and a half at the hairdresser’s and 'THEN, when we came out to look, four more floors were framed in. We spent the next hour watching, just couldn’t leave that corner. Finally had to leave at 5. This morning’s paper says the whole 22 stories were completed by 6:00 last night. It’s the second building that has been constructed in this fash ion. As you looked at it, going up, the little men, up there, plac ing the gleaming metal in place, only two or three men handling each one of the airy-light pieces, it gave you a mighty funny feel ing. From the street below the whole thing looked as light and insubstantial as a deck of cards. Presumably the frames and connecting sheets are bolt ed to the girders inside; pre sumably the whole thing won’t just buckle out and go Hooey if you lean against the wall. But. . ! “What are we coming to!” asked a lot of people in the crowd. Be awful if a bad little boy got loose with a monkey-wrench in side that building. One of those horrible little boys that Charles Adams draws for The New Yorker. Be right down his alley. homa editor, “and demanded that the Tulsa school system come out with some report cards that really report. Parents are advised that ‘a check mark indicates progress ^ in terms of the pupil’s ability only and should not be used as a basis for comparison with the achievement of others’. This is on the theory that it is too cruel tO' grade a child on the excellence of his work or the lack of it. As a result, students who strive to get into fast classes are locked upon as screwballs and squares, and we ||r have created among our children S fine cult of mediocrity. Every body passes. Why row if the cur rent will carry you along?” Today and Tomorrow We have found that in a society where less and less intellectual discipline is exerted, the other dis ciplines fail too. We have found that in seeking adjustment today we too often achieve maladjust ment tomorrow. 0' Should our education be no more than,a mirror of the weak nesses of our society? Or should it stand apart, attempt to develop strong men and women with inde pendent judgment, who, rather than adjusting themselves to the defects of their environment, have the courage to point out those defects and try to do so^mething about them? ^ In the Pratt and Whitney Air- w craft factory where realistic cours es are given to high school grad uates coming in for jobs, the stu dents asked- what was the passing grade. 'The answer flabergasted them. “If you make an error in your calculations,” said the in structor, “100 per cent of the work on that project has to be scrap ped. The passing mark is there fore 100 per cent!” Here are stan- p dards worth talking about: aban- do-nment of the easy road to quick adjustment; adoption of the more arduous but infinitely more re warding present effort for future gain. Arno-ld Toynbee notes that four teen out of nineteen civilizations have committed suicide. Are we too busy learning how to make friends with the girl across the street (taking a course in it, mind ▼ you!) to give us any ho-pe of avoiding the pitfalls into which our predecessors have disappear ed? Or in a society that hangs on the brink has our need yet made us aware that the joy and strength of tom-o-rrow are bom of the dis cipline and effort of today? The PILOT Published Every Friday by the pilot, Incorpwraled Southern Pines. North Carolina 1941-JAMES BOYD—1944 Katharine Boyd Editor C. Benedict News Editor Dan S. Ray Gen. Mgr. C. G. Council Advertising Mary Scott Newton BusiMss Bessie Cameron SmitJi. Society Composing Room 0 Lochsuny McLean, Dixie B. Ray, Valen, Jasper Swearingen Subscription Rates: One Year $4. 6 mos. $2: 3 mos. $1 Entered at the Posloffice at South ern Pinea. H. CL. m second dass fwHil mailer Member National Edilorial Assn, and N. C. Press Assn.
The Pilot (Southern Pines, N.C.)
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July 9, 1954, edition 1
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