Newspapers / The pilot. / Aug. 27, 1964, edition 1 / Page 2
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
Page TWO THE PILOT—Southern Pines, North Carolina THURSDAY, AUGUST 27, 1964 Reflections ILOT Southern Pines North Carolina “In taking over The Pilot no changes are contemplated. We will try to keep this a good paper. We will try to make a little monej tor all concerned. Wherever there seems to be an occasion to use our influence for the p iblic good we will try to do it. And we will treat everybody alike.” — James Boyd, May i',3, 1941. Goldwater And The South We anticipate increasing disillusion ment with Senator Goldwater, on the part of the South, between now and No vember. There is no denying that a large pro portion of the white South was shocked by the passage of the Civil Rights Act and, in the subsequent confusion and emotion, was attracted in a kind of des perate sympathy to those who had op posed it, including the Arizonan who was to become the Republican candidate for President. Yet the; impact of the Civil Rights Act on the South is turning out to be much different from the expected assault by a pack of devils. Many of the Act’s pro visions were translated into action in many Southern communities almost un eventfully. Implementation of the Act was led throughout the region by “hard- headed” businessmen mindful of the economic loss and waste that fruitless de fiance Would bring to their communities and also mindful of the unalterable fact that law is law and that the South must learn to live with the Civil Rights Act as best it can. It begins to appear that the outlook may be nowhere as bleak as it had seemed to many Southerners. Working against Goldwater, in the South, will be not only this increasing acceptance of the Civil Rights Act (or at least increasing recognition of the futility of disputing it), but also there will be increasing recognition of the crass ex pediency of the candidate’s position on Civil Rights and his sly eagerness to stir and foment the divisive, explosive race issue. Goldwater, while playing the per fect gentleman, has somehow, without quite saying it, pitched an appeal to reactionary, irrational elements in the Southern mentality: that the South would be “safer” with him. On the expediency score, Ralph McGill recalls, in a recent column, how Gold- water has voted “half a dozen times or more” for “Powell amendments,” the “riders” offered to other bills by Con gressman Adam Clayton Powell of New York City, providing for the cutoff of all federal funds to any state, locality or project that did not immediately elimi nate aU racial segregation and discrimi nation. Because of the lack of any review or protection offered by the amendments, McGill points out, even many liberals opposed them. But Goldwater was for them every time. He did not then, be cause he was not then courting the South, Wilderness: A National Necessity Approval of the Wilderness Act by both Houses of Congress—setting up a National Wilderness Preservation Sys tem—climaxes a long effort by friends of conservation, an effort in which this newspaper is proud to have played a small part. While the compromise measure which was passed could not be called perfect (a House-inserted amendment imfortun- ately authorizes certain new mining operation in Wilderness areas), it is high ly gratifying that 9.2 million acres, large ly tracts within existing National Parks, have been set aside as exempt from ell development, with expansion of the total area to more than 14 million acres in prospect. Wilderness Areas will bar not only commercial de velopments but also access and activities that would in any way disturb the natural state of their forests, plants and wildlife. From such areas will be derived special values in the fields of recreation, science, education, beauty and history. A review of these values—and modern man’s increasing need for them—is found in an article on this page. While this article deals primarily with the values as provided by the National Parks, its whole philosophy applies, with added em phasis and deeper meaning, to the Wild erness Areas which have now been assured. It is interesting to note that the Wilder ness Act stands as number 19 on Presi dent Johnson’s list of 30 “must” meaures —an indication of changing public atti tude toward the whole subject of land and wildlife preservation and conserva tion. A couple of months ago, the President spoke out strongly for a much smaller but vitally important conservation pro ject when he asked the National Park Service to prepare a study and plans for a national redwood park in California, to be blocked out in a seven-mile-long valley near the Pacific coast, an area containing the world’s three tallest trees. (This area was recently the subject of a magnificently illustrated article in the National Geographic Magazine.) Noted, too, as advancing the cause of conservation are Congress’s approval of Grains of Sand exhibit his present tender concern for the “Southern way of life.” Southerners are waking up, too, to the threat that Goldwater poses to agricul ture which remains the broad essential basis of the whole South’s economy and prosperity, no matter how many share croppers’ sons and grandsons now wear white collars gracefully and quote Barry devoutly over their martinis. When the tobacco markets opened ear lier this month with prices higher than a year ago. The Raleigh Times took occasion to point out, in an eye-opening editorial, that such good prices would never have been possible this year and for many past years, without the federal tobacco control program. The Times went on; -•. - “. . . Should the people who have benefitted so much by this federal tobacco control program support a political party whose nominee for President is opposed to those federal farm programs? . . . Barry Goldwater has made it very plain just how he feels about the federal farm program: ‘No man who is familiar with the subject will deny that the policy of price supports and production con trols has been a colossal failure.’ He would have ‘prompt and final ter mination’ of such programs ...” Such “prompt and final termination” would put the average tobacco farmer out of business in a short time, the Times noted. We can’t believe that the South, when it sees this threat clearly, can vote for a Republican candidate who denounces the great federal programs—all inci dentally originating and pushed to frui tion by the Democrats—in agriculture, social security, welfare aid, rural electri fication and other fields—programs that in the past 30 years have revolutionized for the better every aspect of Southern life. Farmers, above all, should oppose the Goldwater candidacy. Even those pros perous sons and grandsons in suburbia will, we think, begin to realize, before November, that the “good life” they have won from the South in the past two or three decades has its roots and the hope of its survival in vastly different ways of thought and action than those advocat ed by the Republican candidate. • PROLOGUE TO A TRUE CIVILIZATION' Why Preserve Nation’s Wilderness? the Land and Water Conservation* Fund Bill and the bills to establish the Fire Island National Seashore, near New York City, and the Ozark National Scenic Riverway. Friends of conservation are now working for preservation, as a Na tional Park, of a portion of the Indiana Dunes area at the southern end of Lake Michigan. If what the writer of the article on this page says is true—that, for all of us, there is deep and abiding need, whether we know it or not, “to dwell within an out ward environment offering a continuing sense of communion with nature”—parks and wilderness areas are as much neces sities of our national life as highway systems, public utilities and all the ac cepted “practical” aspects of modern existence in the U. S. A. Irresponsible Parents Complaints have been coming to the Pilot from residents of the Southern Pines area who are angry and worried about the prevalence of fireworks-shoot- ing. Parents, they say, are evidently allow ing their children to bring back from South Carolina, after beach visits, fire crackers and other pyrotechnics that are legal in that state (though even banned there in most of the beach communities), but which are illegal in North Carolina. Do parents who allow this know that the sale, possession, transportation and use of fireworks are banned by law in this state? It’s hard to think they don’t. And if they do, they are setting a poor example for their children, as well as endangering their own and other young sters and creating a noise nuisance in their neighborhoods. Most people, understandably, hesitate to call the police and swear out warrants against neighbors. The problem—and it’s a real and pressing one here, we’re told—can best be solved by the exercise of that responsibility and respect for law the community has a right to expect from all its residents. The Wilderness Act's re cent approval by both houses of Congress, as noted in an editorial on this page, em phasizes a subject frequently brought to the attention of Pilot readers: the vital im portance of undeveloped and unspoiled areas, as population expands and such areas di minish. The following editor ial by Anthony Wayne Smith, president andi general counsel of The National Parks Asso ciation—appearing in "Nat ional Parks Magazine"—de velops the sociological and philosophical basis for pre servation of natural areas as a bsisic need of mankind and as "prologue to a true civili zation:" As man in these middle years of the 20th Century achieves a tentative mastery over the forces of nature in both their fiiendly and hostile aspects, he confronts inescapable questions as to the use he shall make of his powers. It can be argued that the science of the West, and not merely its technology, has probably been motivated from its earliest be ginnings by the impulse toward such mastery over nature, to ward power. The impulse toward outward power was paralleled, or perhaps even preceded' by, a similar im pulse toward power over inward nature, over the supposedly anarchic emotional impulses of the self. This doubly motivated power- seeking purpose makes the ap praisal of viable social goals the more difficult as it represses deep- seated impulses unrelated to, or even in conflict with, the drive toward mastery over the outward environment: the impulse, for example, to lie idly at the margin of a free-flowing stream, instead of working. The momentum of the effort toward outward con quest carries beyond the conquest of the non-human world and fastens upon human nature itself, seeking to remodel it in the image of the power drive. Seek Understanding The insights of psychology and psychiatry are too often employed to enlist men- in the conquest of nature, their fellowmen, and themselves, rather than in seek ing such understanding of the in ner world as might shed light on desirable social objectives. Students of the emotions and the mind search nonetheless for criteria of the normal or the ideal by whcih to judge personal and social health. Students of govern ment, by the same token, search for dependable criteria of essenti al human nature as comparison points for judging political policy and social systems. Observing, one may detect the slow emergence of a science of man which, beginning with post ulates, and proceeding toward verifiable hypotheses, may event ually provide compass bearings for rational long - term social policy decisions. Under pressures generated by the increasing overcrowing of the planet, which are destined to be come more intense with each suc ceeding shock-wave of the popu lation, we begin to discern among our fundamental human traits a deep-seated need for an ampli tude of living space, for a readily available surrounding quietude, for a continuous experience of natural beauty, and for an inti mate and dependable association with the other forms of life, plant and animal, which compose the biotic communities to which, be fore the prison cities arose, men always belonged. Need Defined The need is to dwell ’vithm an outward environment offering a continuing sense of comnrunion with nature, but one which both reflects and reinforces an inward environment of serenity, balance, and freedom. The great treasure that is pro tected by our national parks, for the sake of which we in turn are so determined as a people to pro tect the parks, is precisely the surviving record of the once-gen- eral natural environment of great spaciousness and unsurpassed beauty. But this record is import ant, not primarily as record, but as foretaste of the future, pro logue to a true civilization. The original inhabitants of this continent lived within scenery of this kind as their constant habi tation. Their lives, howsoever rig orous, were drenched in this spac iousness, quietude, grandeur; the seaboard, when the Europeans found it, was a lush jungle of flowering vines, blossoming hard woods, and scented pines, opulent in wildlife: the Appalachians were an endless succession of densely forested ridgetops which lost themselves westward; the prairies and plains were vast grasslands under enormous skies; the Rock ies and Sierra moved men to visions beyond this earth. Temporary Escape The normal experience.? of the pristine American may be I'ecap- tured now in our temporary escape from industrial civilization to the parks. The mystery-en shrouded summits of Mt. Rainier in cloud; the still, high immensity of the great mountain Sequoia groves; the moonlit corridors of OPPORTUNITY We have come to world leader ship because our people have had the opportunity to develop this nation under a government and a Constitution that gave them po litical freedom and encouraged initiative, enterprise, responsi bility, industry and thrift. Free dom and achievement are not unrelated. This nation has be come one of history’s finest il lustrations of how a people can enrich life and raise their whole level of economic well-being when they are given justice, lib erty and incentive. —HERBERT V. PROCHNOW "THE PUBLIC SPEAKING" letters column is on page 3 today. Olympic Park, home of the bear, the elk, the cougar: all serve to re-create the primitive experience for modern man, and to command a restoration, not a nostalgic back ward glance. It is entirely possible for the affluent and leisurely industrial society whose advent is presup posed by western science and technology to re-establish its hu man communities in an environ ment as magnificent as that which our neolithic predecessors enjoy ed, though doubtless not identical with it; if our growing insights into our own deepest nature have enduring validity, these possibi lities must become imperatives of modern social policy. PoTjulation Problem Among the preconditions of success in such an environmental restoration would obviously be the arrest of the population ex plosion. The religious and secular leadership of mankind' is now coverging insistently upon the imperatives of such arrest. The presently expressed inteniions of American women in respect to family size reveal a rapidly broad ening understanding of the need for limitation. These are domains of conduct in which custom and group opin ion wiU be controlling. The ac cepted practice seems likely to settle upon the two- or three- child family; if three, granted continuance or reduction of pre sent death rates, population will continue to expand; if two, a slow decline over centuries might ensue. By the time significant arrest has occurred, the present heavy population of the planet may have doubled or trebled; a slow decline would give relief from congestion and ameliorate pres sures on resources and production. A population stabilization or re duction of some description, thanks to the ultimate common sense of the species, seems virtu ally inevitable; if so, a broad en vironmental restoration becomes possible. Altitude Must Change The other, and perhaps more serious, precondition of restora tion is a basic shift of deep-seated attitudes toward nature; not con quest, but empathy, appreciation, enjoyment, must become the watchwords. We need only recog nize that it is precisely in the wonders and beauties of a normal natural environment that we find many of our greatest satisfactions, to mod'ulate, abate, recind the compulsion toward the domina tion of all things which is present ly working toward the domina tion and destruction of our own kind. There are many signs of pro found, if slowly moving, changes in prevailing attitudes' in this field; they could easily burst into the sunlight of clear, new skies, into a moral revolution. In such event, the parks will be there, if resolutely protected, as symbols of a new world of natur al beauty within which men may settle themselves permanently on a lovely and livable planet. Rolling Down To Rio! In France, hors d’oeuvres are considered the perfect opening course to a good meal. Says that famed culinary genius, M. Andre Simon: “The gastronomic mission of the hors d’ oeuvre is to create or improve thirst and at the same time to enable us to carry in greater safety more sail, in the shape of wine, provided we carry also more ballast, in the shape of food.” The Almanac Again Armour’s Almanac is a book of odd but captivating ideas and a few facts. Among the latter is this about Franz Hals, the Dutch painter, whose birthday was yes terday; that is, yesterday, 1584. ■ “Franz Hals’s most famous*^ painting is ‘The Laughing Cava-^ lier,’ a picture which is not only well - painted but well-labeUed, inasmuch as it depicts a cavedier, laughing. . “This is the sort of thing you don’t come upon very often in art,” says Mr. Armour. Thanks, Pat! Last week, GRAINS received a big compliment: we were includ ed in a distinguished list of dis tinguished people, bracketted be tween Walter Lippmann and T.R.B. of The New Republic. And the complimenter was no less than Southern Pines’s top flight Birchite (or is it Bicher?). True, the list that Pat "Van Camp had drawn up, in which The Pilot occupied such a prominent position, turns out to be a very odd one: all of us are, she said, occupied in the dubious exercise of “salivating” together. There we all were, in Pat’s let ter to “The Public. Speaking,” engaged in salivating—we could n’t understand exactly why, but Pat knows. Anyway, we’re proud to be put in any list, doing anything, with Lippmann and T.R.B., especially if w^’re put there by our favorite Birchite. In Those Days Promotion in the old days was hardly Madison Avenue style. Here’s an ad boosting Moore County whose people “are the best and sturdiest class in the South!” It is dated: 1903. CARTHAGE RAILROAD This railroad extends eighteen and a half miles from Cameron to HaUison through the best sec tion of Moore County. Carthage, the countv seat of this richest county in the centre of the long-leaf pine region, is situated on this road, ten miles west of Cameron, about 800 feet above the sea-level and is noted for its pure and dry atmosphere and beautiful scenery. As a resort it is a fitting spot in which to spend either winter or summer. Quite a number of Northern people visit this place annually. As a fruit growing section the country adjacent to Carthage is unexcelled in quality of soil and the climatic conditions are per fect. Moore county offers to settlers and investors the greatest advan tages to be found in the South. Truck and fruit growers have here quick connection with North ern markets. The people are the best and sturdiest, class in the South and invite new-comers of good char acter and honest purposes. Business enterprises find here excellent locations and great in ducements are offered. W. C. PETTY, General Manager Carthage, N. C. OFFICIALS; General Manager W. C. Petty, Carthage Secretary W. J. Adams, Carthage Treasurer L. P. Tyson, Carthage Auditor W. C. Petty, Jr., Carthage THE PILOT Published Every Thursday by THE PILOT, Incorporated Southern Pines. North Carolina 1941—JAMES BOYD—1944 Katharine Boyd Editw C. Benedict Associate Editor Dan S. Ray Gen. Mgr. C. G. Council Advertising Bessie C. Smith Advertising Mary Scott Newton Business Gloria Fisher Business Mary Evelyn de Nissoff Society Composing Room Dixie B. Ray, Michael Valen, Thomas Mattocks, J. E. Pate, Sr., Charles Weatherspoon. Subscription Rates Moore County One Year ’. $400 Outside Moore County One Year $5.00 Second-class Postage paid at Southern Pines, N. C. Member National Editorial Assn, and N. C. Press Assn.
Aug. 27, 1964, edition 1
2
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75