Wolfe
editor
aier. irreverent jokester
9
deb
9
North Carolina Collection
Thomas Wolfe
oM
by Charles E. Flinner
United Press International .
, . WASHINGTON Soft coal miners
, called a strike at . midnight M onday,
beginning a production stoppage of at least
two weeks which appeared likely to worsen
the nation's economic plight and produce
outright hardship for many industries and
public services. ..,A-- 1 ; :,-uJ.
Negotiations for a new contract to replace
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Em&I
Nan Bailey, former Socialist Worker's party candidate for mayor of Washington D.C.
Bailey ?defiee issuies
in Best on race clash
by Bruce Henderson
Staff Writer
"It the buses don't roll in Boston, it will be
a victory for the racists," Socialist Worker's
party member Nan Bailey said Monday. "If
the buses do roll, it will be a victory for the
blacks; that's the issue in Boston."
Bailey spoke as part of the ; UNC
Colloquium on Individual Rights and
Liberties at 4 p.m. in Memorial Hall. A 21-year-dld
graduate of Brown University, she
was a candidate in November for mayor of
the District of Columbia.
The conflict is a product of 20 years of
black struggles, she said. The national
leaders, she claimed, are trying to split up
black and -white workers so they will not
combine into a powerful voice.
"It seems as if time has stood still" in
Boston, Bailey said. "This has taken history
back 10 years." The unrest is due to the roles
of government and press, she said. Boston is
the site because of its small black population
and ineffective black leadership.
The largely Republican Boston city
council, she said, supports the racism of
white Bostoners. President Ford and Boston
fey Csn Stestaun
Staff Writer
7 is another in a series of articles on
intriguing characters and events from the
University's past.
In Look Homeward. Angel and his later
works, Thomas Wolfe liked to picture
himself as a lonely, alienated college student,
set off from his fellows by his hill-country
gaucherie and his single-minded dedication
to art ignored by the slick, glib, well
dressed Big Men on Campus.
Nothing could have been further from the
truth.
Admittedly, Wolfe did pledge Pi Kappa
Phi (at that time a low-status, "bobtail"
fraternity) as a protest against Greek social
snobbery. In most other respects, however,
his years as a Carolina undergraduate (1917
1920) were a storybook chronicle of success
and satisfaction.
. He edited the Yackety-Yack and wrote for
the Carolina Magazine. He served on the
student council and debated actively in the
Dialectic Society. He. was admitted to the
Vol.83, No. 58
stenke he
the old one that expired at midnight
continued through the day Monday .without
success, and Arnold Miller, president of the
United Mine Workers of America, said it
was a "virtual certainty" the strike would
stretch at least two weeks. Mine owners and
operators agreed with that estimate.
The strike, which was foreordained two
weeks ago, will be a day longer for each day
without a settlement. UMW constitutional
rules ruire contract ratification a 1 0 day
Stall photo by Pettr Ray
mayor White are anti-busing advocates and
Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., has offered
only prayers as a solution, she said.
The issue is not only busing. Bailey said,
but one of equal educational and economic
opportunities for blacks. The Socialist
Worker's party is now crusading to educate
the people of the causes of racism and how to
light them.
When important civil rights legislation
was passed in the early '60's, Bailey said, a
deal was made between black leaders and
government pfficials. This deal put an end to
"Jim Grow" but not much else, she said. In
spite of the efforts, it didn't work.
The violence in Boston, she said, is a
product of national leaders' effort to stir up
racism. Those leaders, she claimed, are
trying to imply that all the world's problems
are caused by non-whites: inflation from
Arab states, overpopulation from India.
Bailey predicted the struggle in Boston
will continue for a long time. She advocated
an overthrow "of a very violent government.
It can't happen through the traditional
processes of politics, though. We must get
rid of the capitalist system and install a
socialist one."
Order of the Golden Recce and virtually
every other campus honorary society except
Phi Beta Kappa.
. The Carolina Playmakcrs staged a
production of his one-act "folk play." The
Return oj Buck Gavin, and starred him in
the title role.
His reputation as an irreverent practical
jokester (he once handed in an English
theme, meticulously copied out on a roll of
toilet paper) won him almost immediate
popularity with the entire student body.
His performance as leader of a mock King
Arthur's Round Table during Pi Kap rushes
was legendary. "My Lord, milady waits
without." "Without what?" "Without food
or clothing." "Feed her and send her in."
As the Tar HeeTs managing editor (1918
1919) and editor-in-chief (1919-1920),
though, Wolfe truly revealed the course of
his later career.
"He was the most disorganized student 1
ever saw," recalled Wolfe's business manager
Nathan Gooding.
During late evening staff conferences, he
would suddenly remember he had not eaten
Chapel
to two-week process before work can be
resumed.
With 120,000 miners idled and 70 per cent
of the nation's soft coal production
disrupted, secondary effects ranging from
layoffs to plant closings promised to further
weaken the limping economy with higher,
unemployment and lower productivity.
Government officials kept close watch as
talks continued, but intervention seemed
unlikely- so long as-there appeared to be
progress, however small. Both sides have
shunned government mediation.
The law provides that President Ford can,
after inquiry, declare a strike to be a
"national emergency" and seek a court
ordered 80-day return to work while the
labor dispute is negotiated. But miners
traditionally have been unresponsive to
injunctions, and there appeared little
likelihood Ford would go that route.
"Miners never got anything without a
strike," said Harold Lininger of Martin, Pa.,
a veteran of 23 years in the mines. "Coal
miners have to catch up, and the time to get it
is right now. We're far behind other
industries."
The first worker layoffs in other industries
dependant on coal may be made by the
railroads.
The Chessie System, largest coal hauler in
the country, posted notices last week of.
immediate layoffs in the event of a coal
strike.
"There's still coal in the pipeline, so we
can't pinpoint the exact number of layoffs,"
said a spokesman for the Chessie,-which
operates 11,000 miles of track throughout
the Southeast and Middle Atlantic States.
Pittsburgh area steel companies, big coal
users, said they had about two weeks of coal
stockpiled but did not plan any layoffs this
week.
However, the steel firms had been geared
for an immediate cutback in coke
production in the event of a coal strike.
"Right now we're going to slow down our
coke-making operations that's all we're
going to do," a Republic Steel Corp.
spokesman said. "It is essential that we
maintain the equipment. If the coke ovens
are left to cool, they break up and crumble."
Bethlehem Steel Corp. said it would
operate "on a day-to-day basis."
The miners, who have no strike fund, had
been warned by United Mine Workers
leaders to be prepared for a strike of two to
three weeks at least.
Gary Edwards of Beaverdale, Pa., a mine
welder, was not overly concerned about the
length of a strike.
"Now we have the government and the
country just where we want them," Edwards
said. "If we can't get what we're asking for
this time, we never will."
The miners listed sick pay, better pensions
and cost-of-living protection as major
contract goals.
Ernest Enedy; 44, of Portage, Pa., who
had worked 26 years in the mines and is a
lormer UMW local president, said a miner's
"whole life is lived in preparation for no
work."
McCarthy to speak
Former Democratic Sen. Eugene J.
McCarthy will speak at 4 p.m. today in
Memorial Hall.
An outspoken critic of U.S.
involvement in the Vietnam War and
presidential candidate in 1968, McCarthy
will appear in conjunction with the
Student Government's Colloquium on
Individual Rights and Liberties.
gnim9
a meal all day and stalk out for a snack at a
local drugstore.
As editor, he would assign stories to his
staff writers, then forget to follow them up.
As a result, he usually wound up writing
most of the copy (once he wrote all of it)
himself.
Normally, on Thursday nights he would
personally deliver the Tar HeeTs proofs to
the printers. On the train from Chapel H ill to
Durham, he would calculate how much copy
and ad space he had, then dash off any filler
material needed.
Then, once he got to the printshop, he
would pull out all the material, most of
which had been wadded in his coat pocket
since noon, and lay it out on proof sheets in
less than IS minutes.
Wolfe liked R J. See man, the old man
who ran the print shop, and carried on a
number of running jokes with him.
Invariably, Wolfe would pretend to be
impatient, demanding to know if the
printing of the Duke Chronicle (which he
insisted on calling the "Chronic-IIT) could
be put off a week, since there was nothing
mm
Chapel Hill's Morning Newspaper
Hill, North Carolina, Tuesday, November
'
J. JV
Shoney's restaurant now gives customers only two bags of sugar with coffee
Invalidation
on PIRG results
by Art Eisenstadt
Staff Writer
Campus Governing Cduncil (CGC) representative Dan Besse filed suit with the
student attorney general's office Monday to invalidate the results of last
Wednesday's campus referendum on the North Carolina Public Interest Research
Group (PIRG).
"Basically, we felt the election was not conducted in an honest and fair manner,"
Besse said.
Besse, PIRG's most vocal advocate on CGC, was an active member of Chapel
Hill People for PIRG, a lobbying group supporting the establishment of a PIRG
chapter on this campus.
PIRG is a statewide non-profit corporation which researches and lobbies for
consumer oriented legislation. Last Wednesday, students voted against establishing
a PIRG chapter here 859 against and 852 for.
Besse and Kay House, another People for PIRG worker, listed themselves as
plaintiffs in the suit. Listed as defendants were an anti-PlRG organization.
Students for Better Campus Government, a spokesman for that organization, Blake
Beam, and Student Government Elections Board chairman Ricky Bryant.
Althought the vote was close and the elections board had to count the ballots five
times Wednesday night, Besse said he is not challenging the election on procedural
grounds.
Besse and House decided to appeal Friday evening on the grounds of a series of
anti-PIRG posters which were printed and distributed by the anti-PIRG
organization two days before the election.
"We felt the posters were misleadin&and did not leave time for effective rebuttal,"
Besse said. "1 feel those are effective grounds for a new election."
Beam could not be reached for comment by Monday. v
Besse would not say exactly which portions of the poster he would charge as being
false. "It would be indiscreet to comment at this time about that," he said.
However, he did say he thought the poster as a whole was misleading.
In the past, Besse has complained about a sentence which referred to PIRG as a
non-student organization. "PIRG is a student organization," Besse said Monday.
"It is not a UNC organization, but it is a student organization nonetheless.
The state organization, which is headquartered in Durham, has a fulltime
professional director and lawyer and several other workers. But pro-PIRG forces
regard them as employees of the PIRG state board of directors, which is composed
of students from the four North Carolina universities that already have PIRG.
chapters.
worth reading in it anyway.
Once, Seeman. noticing that Wolfe always
signed his by-lines "Thomas C. Wolfe,"
asked him, "Say, Tom, when you get to be a
famous writer, are you going to use your
middle initial or just sign yourself Thomas
Wolfe? "
"Middle initial? Hell, no! How would it
look if Shakespeare had signed himself
William J. Shakespeare?"
Years later, Seeman still said he could not
tell if Wolfe was trying to be flippant or not.
Wolfe's reputation as an editorial writer
quickly spread statewide. During the 1920
Democratic primary, his column,
"Handbook of Useful Information to Those
Gubernatorially Inclined," was reprinted in
dozens of papers and even quoted by the
contending candidates.
Other features, such as "Ye Who Have
Bsen There Only Know," an impressionistic
reminiscence of football junkets to the
University of Virginia, presaged his
distinctive mature style.
More often, however, Wolfe preferred to
satirically skewer recurrent campus
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12, 1974
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Staff photo by Peter Ray
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problems.
His regular column. "With Apologies to
Mr. Pepys," recounted the everyday hassles
of a student's life in Restoration English:
"Thence to dinner, where we had a stew
smelling of goat but dessert was good."
Or, "Infinite busy in the afternoon and
with eagerness to supper, finding a rubber
heel with gravy in side dish at my plate."
Another favorite Wolfean target was the
habits of Franklin Street merchants. One
sketch pictured a pious druggist preparing to
raise the price of his milkshakes:
" 'John, my boy, have you watered the
milkT
" 'Yessir.'
" 'Diluted the syrups? Mixed sand with
the sugar? -"
'Yessir.'
" 'Then John, you have done your duty
like a man. Ixt us now go into the chapel for
mid-day blessing. The Lord has been good to
us.' "
Apparently, things don't change much in
50 years.
Founded February 23, 1893
cint'dowini
on
by Sandra Millers
Staff Writer
At first, most grocery shoppers were
outraged, but now they're getting used to it.
Watching the price climb on a five-pound
bag of sugar has become as much a part of
their weekly routine as Monday morning.
What are they doing about it? Area
grocers say most shoppers are simply cutting
down on the amount of sugar they buy. A
recent survey by the Raleigh News and
Observer indicated a similar trend in Raleigh
and also revealed that so far most people are
not hoarding sugar to safeguard against
possible shortages and even higher prices.
But at least two Chapel Hill grocers
disagreed, noting that shoppers are stocking
up on sugar.
"We did sell out Friday about noon," said
the Eastgate A&P manager. "People did buy
more than usual, and we haven't been able to
get any more yet." He said A&P's police on
limiting individual sugar sales is dependent
on the regional office in Charlotte, and no
rationing instructions have been issued yet.
"People have been buying more, trying to
stock up," said Ethel Paschal of Big Star,
"but we've had no trouble keeping sugar in
stock." Paschal said some of the Big Star
chain stores have put a limit on individual
sugar purchases but thcChapel H ill store has
not yet followed this example.
Fowler's Food Store manager Bob Fowler
said he has not noticed any trends of sugar
hoarding in his store. "People have already
quit buying more than they have to have."
Fowler said. "And we have no problems
keeping sugar in stock."
Fowler said the price of sugar has been
rising at least once a week for the past 10
weeks and quoted the most recent price,
issued Friday by the Savannah Sugar
Refinery, producers of Dixie Crystals, at
$39.48 per 12 five-pound bags, wholesale, or
$3.29 per bag, retail.
"Some grocers are selling it at cost."
Fowler said.
While hoarding sugar is just beginning to
become an area grocery store trend, it is
already a problem for many local restaurant
owners. Some have been forced to devise
new methods of dispensing sugar to guard
against pilferage at tables.
"We had it all on the tables," said Ben
Berry, manager of Shoney's, "but now our
waitresses carry it in their pockets and pass it
out only when people ask for it."
Elvin Clark, manager of Ye Old Waffle
Shop, said the hike in sugar prices has
aflected his business, too.
"It has forced us to increase our prices
slightly," he said. "The prices of jelly, sugar
and syrup have all gone up.
"But as far as the way we handle sugar, it
hasn't changed; we still have packets on the
table," Clark said.
Willie Ranes at the Riverview Steakhouse
in Eastgate said sugar has been moved from
tables to the counter where it is available
only in individual packets.
"It seems to have helped," she said. "So
many people were taking it before."
Other area restaurant managers admitted
sugar prices are affecting business but said
they have not changed their method of
handling sugar.
"It has affected us, but we haven't changed
our policy (of having sugar available on the
tables)," said Robert Welch, manager of
Golden West. "We don't want to offend our
customers by giving them only two packets
of sugar when they might want three. Having
our girls running back and forth for more
sugar would probably be more detrimental
than the money we'd save."
sugar