Newspapers / The Franklin Press and … / Jan. 19, 1956, edition 1 / Page 2
Part of The Franklin Press and the Highlands Maconian (Franklin, N.C.) / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
dltt Jfrnnkim tyrtz* nnb (Eta Mighlnnxte JHnrumntt Entered ?t Post Office, Pmnklin. N. C? u second dan matter PublWiKI ererj Tbundey by The Franklin Preea Prmnklla. N. C. Telephone 24 WEIMAR JONES . . . . BOB 8. SLOAN .... J. P. BRADY ... MM ALLKN 8TT.KR MRS. MARION BRYSON CARL P. CAB* FRANK a. 8TARRETTE DAVID H. SUTTON O. E CRAWFORD . Editor Business Manager Newt Editor Society Editor and Office Manager Proofreader Mechanical Superintendent Shop Superintendent . . . . Commercial Printer Stereotyper SUBSCRIPTION RATES Outs id* Macon Couictt <*? Y?r *=-?? Six llanth? Thre? Month? 100 INSZDK MACOM COUKTT One Tear $236 Six Months .... Hk Three Months 1-00 JANUARY 19, 1956 Smart Politician Wh o says Dwight D. Eisenhower isn't a smart politician ! First, lie keeps his own party in the dark about his plans until it's too late for any other Republican to have much chance to win. So now even those Republican leaders who most abhor the New Deal ist tint of the Eisenhower administration are run ning to him, begging him to run, as the only hope of Republican victory. Then he steals the Democratic program, lock, stock, and barrel. He's so enthusiastic about more social security, a soil bank, more foreign aid, and now federal aid to education, that it can be argued to the most extreme Democratic voter that he can cast his ballot for Ike and still be voting Demo cratic ! Interposition We're hearing a lot just now, in the segregation integration discussion, about "interposition". To most of us, it's a new word; to others, who seem to faintly remember having heard it, there is the impression that it was an argument used by the South, back before the Civil War, in its effort to save slavery. The word, though, is far from new ; and it had nothing to do with slavery. It seems to have been first used in the 1700's, when Kentucky and Virginia adopted resolutions, inspired, incidentally, by none other than Thomas Jefferson. (There i.s evidence, however, that Jeffer son did not intend the resolutions to go quite as far as they did.) Kentucky and Virginia, far from trying to save slavery, were protesting against an invasion of human rights. The alien and sedition acts of that day ? strangely reminiscent of today's similarly fear-inspired laws and actions that ignore the plain mandates of the U. S. Constitution ? pre cipitated the controversy. In those days, the Tenth Amendment to the Con stitution, providing that "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution . . . are re served to the States respectively, or to the people", was taken seriously. The wrothful Kentuckians and Virginians held that the alien and sedition acts obviously were in conflict with the Constitu tion, and so those states set out to "interpose" to prevent enforcement of the acts, until and unless the Constitution was changed by amendment, in the regularly authorized manner. They called for sim ilar action by other states, but got little response. The word popped up again sonic 15 years later, this time in New England. But this time the pro test ? with one of the loudest voices that of Daniel Webster ? was against an invasion of economic rights. Acts of the Madison administration, aimed at Great Rritain, had the effect of punishing New England shipping interests instead; and the wroth ful New Knglanders held a secret "interposition" convention at Hartford, where they virtually threatened to secede from the Union. That contro versy ended when a treaty of peace was signed with England, at the close of the War of 1812. It was John C. Calhoun who next brought up "interposition". Again the problem was economic; but it had nothing to do with slavery. Congress had adopted a protective tariff, favorable to the in dustrial North, unfavorable to the agricultural South, and Calhoun proposed interposition. Within her borders, he suggested. South Carolina would "nullify" the law. (While "nullification" generally is associated with the name of Calhoun, he didn't coin the word; it was used in the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions.) Andrew Jackson, the then President, is said to have threatened to hang Calhoun ? and to- have re gretted, on his deathbed, that he didn't. However that may have been, Jackson did not win the total victory he generally is credited with. As a matter of history, that controversy was terminated by a compromise ? adoption of a plan for gradual elimi nation of the tariff. So today's segregationists, when they propose "interposition", are on solid historical ground. Whether it is solid legal ground is another ques tion. Others' Opinions Wanted: A New Start (Christian Science Monitor) The Veterans Administration committee which held hearings in the case of James Kutcher a couple of weeks ago finds evi dence of his disloyalty insufficient to justify cutting off his pension. (Mr. Kutcher is the veteran who lost both legs in a mortar explosion during the Italian campaign.) The commit tee held, however, that had the charges been proved it would have revoked what he asserts is his only means of support. Humanity compels us to acclaim this ruling. But we can ac claim neither the law, its interpretation, nor the procedures which placed this handicapped veteran in so precarious a position. The law rightly directs that no one guilty of what amounts to treason shall receive a pension. But it permits the VA to rule without due process or a court trial on the guilt or innocence of one accused. Mr. Kutcher was accused of treasonable behavior, first be cause of association (membership in a group on the Attorney General's "front" list), and second because of words (allegedly anti-government speeches). These charges, investigated before hearing any defense by him, were held to establish "prima facie" gilt. Then he was told to disprove them! The VA has now done the decent thing. But this whole ap proach to security, from legislation through administrative ver dicts, runs counter to the traditions of justice which have been part of the fabric of the "American way." So-o-o-o, Bossy, H'ist Yer Foot! (Roscoe Macy In Windsor, Colo., Beacon) Casey Greenwald invited me to attend a couple of the early meetings of the local dairymen's association, but the group met on Wednesday night so I couldn't quite make it. And may be it's just as well. You see, I like dairymen fine, but if there's one thing I hate and detest, it's a milk cow. It's a long-standing aversion, dating clear back to about my eighth birthday, when father finally agreed to let me take over the milking of the family cow. I had actually begged for the job! Little did I know. . . . In those days, every small-town Household that could afford a cow kept one. Only in the big cities could you buy milk at the grocery store. Naturally, purebred cows were almost un known except in metropolitan dairy centers. Father would buy a fresh cow periodically and keep her un til she "went dry"; then he would go out in the country and pick up another. And each one of those cows, it seemed to me, was just a little ornerier than the one we had before. In these days of lock-in stanchions and milking machines, only a careless dairyman ever gets himself switched in the face with a coWs tail. But that happened to me over and over again, especially in flytime, and you can't imagine a more ex cruciating experience. Then, too, there were times when it rained in the morning, and the sun emerged and beat down for the rest of the day. The old cow would get her tail all balled up with mud in the morning, then it would bake brick-hard during the day. That evening I'd squat down on the milking stool and start to oper ate when ? bang!? that round brickbat would swat me right behind the ear. You might think a fellow could guard against these things, but unfortunately, a cow swats flies from both ends. So, if the milker sits too close to her front end, he's right in the line of fire when she swings her bony hMd around to shoo the file* that are out of range of her tall. ^ I usually finished milking either with my eyes filled with tears from that switching tall or In a semi-stupor from blows by the cow's head, or both. Nor Is that all. There's quite an area underneath a cow where flies are safe from both tall- and head-swings. She deals with these with a kick of her hind foot. That, however, hap pens only when the milking Is just about finished and the pall practically full. The kick, of course, upsets the bucket, which means that you might as well have gone to baseball practice Instead of coming dutifully home to your appointment with Bossy. I've often wondered just what I gained from the 7,254 milk ings X performed between my eighth and fifteenth years. I dldnt learn to keep my temper, that's for sure; every swat and every tail-switch seemed to make me a little madder than the last. Maybe I did learn, from those twice-a-day milking engage ments, to respect appointments ? anyway, I'm seldom late for them. Yet even that has it's humiliating angle. How would. YOU like to owe one of your most admirable traits to a cow? and <a meanspirited, flybitten, unpedigreed cow, at that? # Letters Macons Little White Churches Editor, The Press: I've enjoyed many things about your town since my visit there from the West Coast. Your weather, your rolling hills with evergreen foliage, kind friendly people who have made me feel I belong and who I'm sure I will come back some time to see again. But the most outstanding thing among all the cherished memories of my trip will be a mind picture of your little white churches. I helped to drive a car from the State of Washington the week before Christmas, and when I arrived I was tired and anxious to reach the home of relatives, where I could rest. Approaching the business district of Franklin the first lovely little house of God to welcome me was the Catholic church. Its nativity scene spoke out the written words of peace on earth and glory to God in the highest. Their faith Is a dif ferent one from mine, but the message was the same and the Christ child the same Saviour I worship. So I felt as if this little church were extending a warm welcome to me because we stand united together in a common Christian faith. Where I came from we build our churches more or less in the busy districts, but here your churches crown the tops of quiet, peaceful hills and one feels as if the peace of God which passeth all understanding surrounds and protects them from the noise and traffic of a busy atomic age. And there are so many of them? Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian. They're built so close together ? one would never have to stay away from church because they had no car. What a memory on a Sunday morning to have seen the young and old as they walked the roads to be present at serv ices. I stood on a hill one day and looked into the distance where the only thing I gould see on the wood-studded land scape was the faint outline of a church spire. It reminded me of a story I had read during the bitter fighting of World War 2. Our American bombers in their fight for victory had utterly obliterated a German town ex cept for one lone church with Its great spire standing as if to defy the ravages of war. Our flying aces recognized it as a miracle from the hand of God, and it became sort of a land mark which they flew over and protected. To them,- it stood for the ideals of freedom, faith and a united world which they were fighting and dying to establish. So do the lovely little white churches of Franklin and its outlying districts. MRS. RALPH S. DOWDLE Sedro Woolley, Wash. Abolish Public Schools? South's Only Hope Lies In Education (EDITOR'S NOTE: The fol lowing is from an address by Jonathan Daniels, editor of the Raleigh News and Ob server, delivered at Coker Col lege, Hartsville, S. C.) No man ? certainly no South erner, in his right mind would minimize the dimensions of the problem of the South created by the Supreme Court decision ordering the desegrega tion of our schools. It is not solved by the fact that our population has altered almost as rapidly as our pace. Indeed. It seems irrelevant to present people in the midst of the pres ent problem that the white Negro ratio in South Carolina has altered from a Negro ma jority of 150,000 in 1910 to half a million more white people than Negroes today, if is not made simple by the fact that In South Carolina the population of cities has doubled in two decades. Nothing makes it a simple problem. But it can be made a more serious problem by those who step promptly, confident ly, angrily forward with ruth less remedies. And the most tragic proposal ever made In a presumably intelligent land Is that the South solve this great public problem by putting an end to public education ? Indeed to all education so far as the overwhelming majority of the people are concerned. The an ger of those who propose such drastic remedies Is understand able in the South but what they propose should be under stood, too, as something beyond secession from the Union. What they urge is secession from civ ilization. Maybe once the dictum was uttered and believed that one Southerner could whip ten Yan kees. There may be those today who believe that a South de nied public education could compete with the skills, the training, the schooling available to men and women and their children in other states and sections. It is an enterprise up on which I as one Southerner would not wish to embark. It would, I believe, if such a fan tastic proposal should be ac cepted in the South, reduce a whole people to levels at which they could not be expected in telligently to cope with this problem or any other. Give us one generation of abandonment of public education in the South and we would all be poor, poor whites together. In our own personal fears and in all those fears put together by men,, who put such fears togeth er, one thing we need to hold to hard in our hearts and our heads is that ignorance is no defense against integration or anything else. Education Is the basis of all we possess and all we hope to be ? and I know no better place to say that with certainty than Hartsville, South Carolina, and Coker College. Trouble is not new in the South. Sometimes it has seemed our heritage. Long ago virtually the last words of John C. Calhoun were "The South, the poor South." Others have seemed to us very often to bring us our troubles. It is just possible, however, that we are not without fault, too. Just a few years before Calhoun whispered that phrase, one of the most distinguished scholars who ever came to South Caro lina, Francis Iieber, now too much forgotten, proposed an epitaph for himself, "Here lies a man who died of the South." He did not die, fortunately, but he lived to go to other regions where he felt his leading was appreciated more. But here in Hartsville, I'd like to talk about a man who left fewer phrases in either des pair or complaint about the South but who I suspect may serve as a better model for Southerners in troubled times. It seems to me time today to talk in Hartsville and every where else in the South about such a man as Major James Lide Coker. I do not find his name mentioned much in the angry records of Reconstruction in South Carolina but I do find, still alive and creative, the works he began in industry, business, agriculture and edu cation not only here but in every part of this South we love together. I suspect his Image on this campus is venerable, maybe bearded. I like to think of him as the boy he was when he went to Harvard at 20 in 1857. He was not alone. In that center of abolitionism as well as eru dition there were 63 Southern ers when your Charleston neighbors fired on Fort Sumter. He studied there soils and plants, chemistry and botany under the great Louis Agasslz. It may be pertinent in the South now that when Agasslz came to America he said that it was a "land where Nature was rich, but tools and work men few. . . Certainly he stirred one great workman from South Carolina in James Lide Coker. , Well, of course, young Coker came home. He went to war. And he came home from war with a thigh Shattered by a ball In Tennessee. He was Maj or Coker. What marked Major James Coker was that he had education in his head and put education to work In building this town, this state, this college. He could have devoted himself to futility and fury. Instead, hardly any where has the education of one man so blessed a family, a town, a state, a South. It does not seem strange to me that he capstoned his success with a college. It would only seem strange to me if anywhere within the expanding influence of his memory any person might consider the abandoment of education as a remedy for anything. Of course, we have great problems, in the South ? and (See Back Page, 1st Section) VIEWS ! By BOB SLOAN I You can draw a line right down the "iVy* and on both sides there are strong argu ments. Arguments which are backed both by logic and moral conviction. What would.be the subject of this debate? Inter position as a means of protest against a decision of the Su preme Court of the United States, which is judged wrong by a considerable majority of the people of a state or group of states. Currently, the word, interpo sition, which is nearly as old as the political history of our country, is being used a lot In connection with the recent court decision which declared segre gation in the public schools Il legal throughout the land. Many supporters of this pol icy feel that the court decision is in error, and that through the method of 'Interposition the state governments should say to the federal government, "this is a wrong interpretation of the Constitution and we will not abide by it until It is made a part of the law of the land by an amendement to the Consti tution." Underlying this argument Is the historical fact that that portion of the Constitution, the fourteenth amendment, upon which the court based its decis ion to declare segregation Ille gal, was forced upon a large number of states, against the will of most of the people with in those states. There is strong doubt if an amendment to the Constitution which prohibited segregation In public services would be adopt ed by the necessary thirty-six states today. However, those who favor in terposition, as a method to fight integregation in the schools, should stop and con sider. If every major decision of the Supreme Court, which brought an unfavorable reac tion from a sizeable group of people, was contested In such manner, the decisions of the court would become meaning less and the whole structure of the federal system of govern ment would be weakened Certainly, the argument of the sovereignty of the people is behind those who advocate Interposition, but hadn't they best stop and consider before they advocate the practice very widely? If interposition led to. the breakdown of our strong feder al government, what force would there be strong enough to insure that the sovereignty of the people would reign su preme? Do You Remember? (Looking backward throocli the files of The Press* 50 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK A new firm under the style of Cunningham and Curtis has been opening up a stock of goods within the past week in the old Allman store house. The firm is composed of Will Cun ningham and Will F. Curtis. .Mrs. H. S. Mizener, Jr., left yesterday morning to return home to Knoxville, after spend ing a month here. Mr. and Mrs. H. O. Cozad, of Andrews, were visiting Mrs. Cozad's parents, Mr. and Mrs J. A Conley, a few days last week. 25 YEARS AGO Purchase of The Franklin Press by Blackburn W. Johnson, of Asheville, from S. A. Harris, was announced in Franklin on Saturday. The new editor plans several changes in The Press, among which is enlargement from five to seven columns Miss Rebecca C. Nail, who has been visiting her sister, Miss Corinne Nail, in Washington, D. C., returned to Highlands re cently. ? Highlands item Mr. C. S. Brown, Jr., who has been in school in Augusta, Oa , is here spending several days with his parents at the Scott Griffin Hotel. 10 YEARS AGO Mr. and Mrs. R. D. Carson, of Oak Ridge, Tenn., were here visiting Mrs. Carson's parents, Mr. and Mrs. George McGee Mrs. C. T. Blaine left last week for Orlando, Fla., where she plans to spend several weeks with her niece, Mrs. Waterman Jernlgan, and Mr Jerntean
The Franklin Press and the Highlands Maconian (Franklin, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Jan. 19, 1956, edition 1
2
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75