North Carolina Newspapers

?&e fftmftlitt Wit#? and Qtyr Highland Iflanmtan WEIMAR JONES Editorial Page Editor TIIl!HSI)AY. MAY S, 1960 WHAT'S SOLUTION ? Does Anybody Know? It may Ik; t hat Cartoogechaye- Creek is the best source for a town water supply. It may even he, as the board of aldermen seems to feel, that the Cartoogechaye project is the one and only solution of Franklin's water problem. It may be, too, that a Way ah tributaries water shed is not the answer. It may even be that no watershed-type source is practicable. We don't know. We doubt if anybody knows. We doubt if it is possible for anybody to know; because nobody could know until, first, every pos sible source had been carefully studied, and, second, the advantages and disadvantages of each had been given careful and open-minded consideration. There is evidence that neither of those conditions has been met. Certainly, there is evidence that the board of aldermen has not always been entirely open-minded. Here are only the two latest bits of such evi dence : Whether Messrs. II. H. I'lcmmons and W. Rus sell Cabe are good engineers may be a matter of opinion. (All they have ever asked is that their fig ures and conclusions be checked by a competent outside engineer.) But there can be no debate about their honesty and their devotion to the best inter ests of this community. In view of that, would it not have been a natural reaction for an open-minded hoard of aldermen to say "thank you" to these citizens for their effort to contribute- information oil a subject of such vital interest to every person who lives in -Franklin? And would it not have been a natural reaction for alder men seeking the facts to see these men and discuss the matter with them? Hut instead of welcoming the new information and examining it to see if it had value, there was an almost immediate effort to discredit the findings'. of the local engineers. And when Rough Fork, as a possible' source of supply, got into general discussion, wasn't the most obvious question : Well, how much water is there? And wouldn't it have been a natural reaction of a board seeking all the facts to fry to find out? especially since the facilities of Coweta 'Hydrologic Laboratory were close at hand? Vet when the Rough Fork flow was measured, it was done at the request of private citizens.' Franklin's aldermen were not enough interested even to ask Coweta for this free service. ^ Maybe tile ( artoogechayc project is the best so lution; maybe it is even the one and only solution. But a third of a million dollars is a lot of money for a little town to spend until somebody knows - for sure. No Room News that the Ku Klnx K|an is re-emerging in various parts of the South is bad news. It is bad news for the South; because a South 4hat produces Ku. Kluxers can hardly hope for tol crance, much less sympathetic understanding, from the rest of the country. More important, it is bad news for the nation; it is a danger, signal when such an organization can grow out of American soil. There is no room in America for a purely racial organization like the Klan, just a^ there is no room for other purely racial organizations, such as the National Associaticui for the Advancement of Col ored I'eople and the Congress of Racial Equality. It is true the pro white klan and the pro-Negro NAACI' and CORF differ somewhat in method. But in both cases, the mark of racism is there. And even as to method, what is the moral dif ference between terror created by cross burning and terror created by economic boycott? That which comes after ever conforms to that which has (one before ? Marcus Aurettns. Cheaper, Too Mud. tii use of ihcmicals ? for pe.st icitlcs and other agricultural purposes ? which may be and 'often' are harmful to man, has created a major problem that affects everybody. Here's just one angle of the problem: Uight now the government is engaged in putting out $20,000,0(X), reports Roscoe Drummond, New V'ork Herald Tribune Washington correspondent, to pay growers for cranberries and caponites that were condemned because they were chemical-in fested. . ? ? Might it not have made better sense simply to forbid use of these harmful chemicals m the first place ? Cheaper, too. LETTERS Water Quality Important Editor The Press: There has been very little mention made in The Fress con cerning the quality of the raw water from the two sources under controversy, and I wonder if there has been sufficient data collected to determine the cost of chemicals, and special equipment and facilities to produce potable water from these two and possibly other sources. The daily cost of material for coagulation, taste and odor control, and sterilization can bo considerable over a period of years ? and their consumption will depend upon the suspended and dissolved solids that oc cur in the raw water. It is highly possible that a controlled watershed in a com pletely forested area could save a lot of money even though the Initial cost might be considerably more. And there is usually no comparison in the quality of the finished water. Another problem that is becoming more and more serious in uncontrolled watersheds is the flood of new and strange agri cultural insecticides, fungicides, rodenticldes, weed killers, de tergents, etc., that find their way into streams running through these areas. And what will come with the nuclear age is anybody's guess. - Our waterworks design engineers are probably the best in the world at designing waterworks, but they are influenced entirely by methods and practices established by those pri marily interested in the manufacture and sale of waterworks equipment and supplies, and systems embracing natural puri fication processes are often frowned upon as being primitive and antiquated; while actually some of the finest water sup plies in the world employ only natural purification processes together with close supervision to see that no contamination can get into the system. I have a summer home on Lake Nantahala and get my water from a protected spring source above my house on the north slope of Wine Spring Bald. From this sourpe we get by gravity flow free, crystal clear ice water that is by actual tests about as good as any drinking water could be. We have friends who visit us from Washington, San Francisco, Tokyo, and other cities that probably have the best water supplies that man can devise for their area, but invariably they are deeply impressed by the abundant, excellent water not only at our place but all through the Nantahala Mountains. And when they leave they fill all the jugs and jars they can crowd into their cars. Also there Is a spring beside the road on my place, the water from which comes from deep in the rock and earth through a pipe, and furnishes free ice water to travelers, road maintenance crews, fishermen, birds, animals, and plants, and I am sure the Health Department would not approve it as it does not have 0:3 ppm chlorine residual, but I have not as yet observed any illness traceable to it. E. A. TURNER, Consulting Engineer, (Former Senior Sanitary Engineer, U. S. Public Health Service). Quitman, Ga. i: vzmm P. 8.: I am not looking for a job. It is just that I hate to see a fine natural resource junked. Mixed Greens (Holyoke, Colo., Enterprise* Mixed greens are good for you ? especially if they're fives, tens and twenties. Smaller Umbrella (Holyoke, Colo., Enterprise) Mon^y saved for a rainy day buys a much smaller umbrella than it used to! And Denver Points . . . (Littleton, Colo., Independent! We contend that anyone under 40 years of age, who was educated in Colorado, should be free of prejudice. For 33 years now, the teachers in . our public schools have taught tolerance and the Brotherhood of Man. Unfortunately, our older citizens got set in their ways be fore Christianity was put into practice, and we still have them around running the show. Our best known Arapahoe county citizen was unwelcome in a "society" coimmunity a few years ago because she was a show girl. We understand that time has corrected this cold shoulder situation? simply because the show girl proved her self too marvelous to resist. ThLs past week, Littleton people were solicited for member ship in a Jefferson county country club. And one of the argu ments for joining was the declaration that minority groups would not be permitted The ?>enver Country Club, most staid of our Colorado insti tutions, refused to allow a Filipino golfer to play in a national tourney. More recently it permitted a Japanese-American girl in such a tourney ?provided she did not use the club build ings. The discrimination even goes to the grave You have to be a Caucasian In order to be burled at Crown Hill or Chapel Hill. You may be an Indian with the Congressional Medal of Honor, but you can't be buried In those two cemeteries. Our other cemeteries are not so cruel. We have not checked on It for 12 months, but in 1958 only one Negro was allowed to clerk In a downtown Denver store. And yet Denver Is always pointing at Little Rock, Ark., and Clinton, Tenn. What is the proper attitude to take In regard to those with other religions and colored skins? A civilised person Judges each individual on his own merits He will soon find that some Negroes or Jews are far more companionable than some white Baptists? and vice versa. Schools And Salaries (Manfceca, Calif., Bulletin) There has been quite a stir about State Senator Stanley Arnold's committee, which la investigating charges that ex orbitant salaries are being paid to administrators in Cali fornia high schools. According to Chairman Arnold, there are some 912 school executives drawing from $6200 to $34,000. An additional 630 associates, assistants, deputies, etc., receive salaries ranging from >5600 to $27,000. Also disturbing to the committee is the fact that some of the highly paid school superintendents are In impoverished districts receiving aid from the state. It would be a mistake to draw any hasty conclusions about the pay of school administrators. It woifld seem, though, that there should be some sort of ratio between teacher pay and the salary of an administrator. Apparently no such ratio ex ists now. The' disturbing thing to us about the much higher salaries of school administrators is that the big difference in salaries tends to biibe teachers into leaving the classroom for the pr<;ener administrative pastures. We have several instances locally where same of our real fine teachers have gone into administrative work, much to the loss of the students. In this day or the common man, uncommonly good teach ers are relatively scarce and should be preserved in the class !aam if at all possible. The quarrel, then, is not with administrative salaries per se. It is with the inabil.ty to bring the pay to top teaching talent closer to that of an administrator. The torches, of course, have shied away from merit pay. This has led to the establishment of salary schedules where all teachers ? good, bad or indifferent ? receive the same amount of money for the same amount of crcdits and for Che same amount of time in the school system. We have no quarrel with the salary schedule, and believe it. is a necessity to provide salary protection for the teacher. We think, however, that a salary schedule should be con sidered as a base rate of pay, and that there should be some provision for paying a teacher above and beyond this scale if he or she be so deserving. Some studies are now being made of this problem, and it appears that merit pay over and above a salary schedule may become quite common in the future. Salaries for teachers, long regarded as too low, are now conceded to be relatively good when taken as an average. But the fact remains that compensation for the good teacher is still inadequate, and some way must be formed to keep these teachers in the classrooms. DO YOU REMEMBER? Looking Backward Through the Files ol The Press G5 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (1895) At 8 o'clock yesterday (May 1) evening the men at work on the new brick hotel discovered fire in the vehicle shed by the side of the Cunningham livery stables. The hands on the building and others in the vicinity ran into the stables and / cut all the horses loose and ran them out. All the vehicles were pu'led out from the shed and saved. The stables, an old wooden structure, burned like tinder. They stood immediately in the rear of the district burned out Inst year, and were the only buildings saved then. The fire was just in the rear of the new brick store building of Mr. E. H. Franks and the new hot -' ,ju ;t going Up. The fire probably started from a pipe or cigar. The loss is about $500 with no insurance. 35 YEARS AGO (1925) A C1i'jv;c/.e'. rar, fi.st prize in the eight-week Franklin Press circulatioi campaign, was awarded April 30 to Miss Grace Barnard, iiecond prize, an Atwater Kent radio set, went to Mrs. Nobia Murray. Other top prize winners, in order, were: Miss Sue Hunnicutt, Mrs. W. T. Moore, Miss Carolyn Sloan, J. L. Sanders, Miss Thelma Ray, Miss Iva Lee Mincey, Miss Charlotte Conley, Miss Ina Henry, Miss Maude Burleson, Lewis Moses, Mrs. Harvey Edwards, John H. Thomas, and Miss Ella Jones. 15 YEARS AGO (1945) Benito Mussol'ni, former Italian dictator, was executed by a firing squad of Italian patriots April 28. 5 YEARS AGO (1955) A motorcade of Franklin Centennial "Brushy Brothers" and "Belles of the Bustles" left today for Raleigh and an appoint ment to see Governor Hodges. ? / STRICTLY PERSONAL By WEIMAR JONES "Is there no way to Industrial ize without losing the quality of gentility and quiet charm?" That question was raised recent ly by Dr. Waldo" Beach, of Duke University, after he had taken a troubled look at what is happening to . North Carolina under the im pact of rapid industrialization. I am optimist enough to believe there is a way. After all, there is nothing es sentially evil about industry. The word, in Its original sense, de scribes a characteristic highly esteemed since Biblical times. ' Nor is industry, in the sense of making things and processing things, something new. Men have always made things and processed things. They made tools in the Stone Age, and nobody knows when they first started process ing milk into cheese. Why. "then, the ills that come with industrialization of the modern variety? This is the age of industry, and we live in this age; so we cannot, if we would, wholly escape the industrial flood. Hence the question is all-import ant. I suspect the evils of modern industrialization grow not out of what it does, but why it does it, and how. We cannot wholly escape the flood, but surely we can control and channel it. By so doing, we can escape the clearly discernible industrial sickness that has be fallen some other parts of the country ? over-urbanization and urbanization at too rapid a rate; destruction of the workman's pride in his work and the sub stitution for his mastery of the job and the machine of their mastery of him: loss of a com munity's freedom when it becomes dependent on or.e. or two big in dustries: over-emphasis on things as a way to happiness, with re sultant destruction of the qualities that differentiate men from ani mals ? often tiie destruction, too, as more anci more members of the family work so they can buy more and more things, of the family as a unit; and. finally, the erosion of those human values and quali ties that alone make a commun ity or a state a good place to live. Is it possible to escape these ills of modern industrialization? I believe it is. I b rieve we can do it by keeping th;se things in mind: It is prop- \ not products, that matter. It is freedom, not security, that brings self-respect and con. tentment. It is pride in the work, not in the pay envelope, that gives purpose to work, and ao to life. And, to a great extent, man can control his enriroment. These Industrial evils are not inevitable in Weston North Caro lina ? nor in that other so-far unspoiled part of the state, the East. Specifically, I believe we can ' industrialize and remain humans ? rather than automatons ? by following a few rules like the6e: 1. Industrialize slowly, so as to avoid the economic, social, and moral maladjustments that ac company any too-rapid change. (Why the rush? You'd think, from the hurry some people are in. there'd be no such thing as industry next week). 2. Seek small plants only; and the smaller the community, the smaller the plant. (No one of a number of small plants could dominate the community; more over, through small plants diversi fication is possible.) * 3. Try. first, for home-owned Industry. (Is absentee factory ownership likely to be any better today than the curse of absentee farm ownership was in another era? The millions now being spent seeking industry from the outside would finance a lot of industry from the inside.) 4. Finst preference should he given, too. to native skill and native temperament. (Why have a workman make the same bolt day after day and hour after hour, when work that calls for individ ual imagination and painstaking care often pays better? Sure, most American industry is geared to, the assembly line, but we can avoid competition with it by em phasizing the other kind.) 5. The industry should fit easily into the community's background, preferably utilizing local resources. (It would seem better economics for a plant in Franklin to make furniture from the trees that grow here than to make automobile tires from rubber shipped a thou sand miles.) 6. Any industry that will destroy the God-giv.en, irreplaceable things we have here should be avoided as the plague. (Hasn't our country side been marred and our air and water polluted enough already? Pure air and water are among our greatest resources.) ( 7. A state and a community should select its industry with the same care an industry selects its employees. (Does ownership of a factory automatically make a man a gpod citizen? In the end, his plant will prove an asset or a liability in direct proportion to how good or poor a citizen he is.) Chapel Hill In The Spring JAKE WADE in Chapsl Hill Weekly Apr;] ii something sort of spccial in Chapel Hill. Maybe it's just a lovely legend. No doubt there are other towns just as pretty and engaging in the spring. The big town of Charlotte, for example, has magnificient homes and gardens, on a grander scale than Chapel Hill. Still, there is just something about this place in April that moves you and makes you feel oh so .good to be alive. Chapel Hill is still reasonably compact, and the young people, both wonderful and sad, walk through the wooded lanes, usually hand in hand. The horticulture, with expensive outlays may be matched, but we doubt that It is excelled anywhere on earth. The kids wear shorts ana are suddenly tannedi with th^ glow of good health and all the ' wonderful years before them. Tops are down on the convertibles, the playing fields are filled, there is a lazy movement. Always in April the late Bob Madry, in the role of the commun ity's public relations ambassador, found some pretty co-eds, posed them in the boughs of his favorite cog wood tree in front of Peabody Building, sent out the pictures to a not unwilling press, advertised for free the loveliness of Chapel Hill in the spring. Bob is gone, and so is that par ticular tree because of the inroads of Progress. But Pete Ivey has. found plenty of others and the story of Chapel Hill's enchant ment in the spring endures. ' < SOCIAL EQUALITY SOUGHT Civil Rights Law To Heighten Racial Tensions BAY TUCKER in Cookeville (1'enn.) Citizen {EDITOR'S NOTE: Mr. Tucker, author of the following article, is a veteran Washington columnist who generally is con sidered a spokesman for the liberal viewpoint. I WASHINGTON ? >? The strictly limited Civil Rights Bill soon to become law through President Eisenhower's signature will sharp en rather than soften tht racial conflict in the South and other sections, in the opinion of both biased and unprejudiced students of the problem. The measure, which was si) severely stripped in its progress throuch the ponderous, legislative machinery that it protects only voting rights through compli cated court intervention, has been denounced by spokesmen for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and by both Republican and Dem ocratic libreals on Capitol Hill. With the religious question now an everyday, front-page headline as a result of the Kennedy candi dacy and the unhappy reaction to it in Wisconsin and West Virginia, the 1960 presidential campaign threatens to subject the American spirit of tolerance and system of democracy to its most serious and troublesome trial in nvcdern po litcal history. ? ? ? The year 1928 offers no com parison, for Alfred E. Smith suf fered from numerous nonreligious liabilities that do not afflict Sena tor Kennedy. Moreover, there had been the untested belief that a new and more enlightened genera tion. tried and united by a sea/ring depression and two tragic wars, had been freed and cleansed of ancient and narrow thoughts Responsible leaders at Washing ton and throughout the nation ? educators, clergymen, social work ers. political leaders ? openly de plore these trends, and strive to I counteract them from collegitite ' classrooms, pulpits and public i platforms. But they admit that they are powerless to check or to , control the mass response to such i emotional questions as racial and ? religious inferences. 1 Like so many Pontius Pllates, i they find that they must leave the fateful decision to the gener ally good sense of the American people, hoping that the November outcome will give no aid and com fort to carping Communists. Their propagandists have already seized upon our two-fold predicament to raise up new enemies against us throughout the watching world *? ? * Of the two threats to national unity in these critical times, the rising racial tension is. perhaps, the more immediate and danger ous. For passage of the Civil Rights Bill propels this conflict into an entirely new and more acute phase. The Negroes are not satisfied with what they term a "political handout" from Congress. They are now insistent upon social equality In all walks and activities, as the 'sitrin" lunchroom demonstrations reveal. Their mere agressive and edu :ated leaders and tacticians have jegun to preach the doctrine of 'unmerited suffering." which is a orm of modern martyrdom. They ire urging the colored people. ?specially the youngsters, to invite imprisonment for the principle of equality at all levels. They de n-ounce Negroes who pay a fine to obtain freedom, for that implies admission of a law violation. This elevation of the racial bar rage has already aggravated ttfe problem In all sections, for many Northern cities are equally in volved and concerned. In the South, it has made it more difficult for the "moder ates," governors, mayors and civic ? roups, to be heard, and to use their influence to achieve a prac tical solution. It has induced ex treme segregationists to run for >ffice against men of good will It has led Northern liberal.-:. Soth Democrats and Republicans, to take a more advanced stand, specially if they have large num jers of Negroes and Catholic con stituents. Unfortunately, politics being vhat tt Is but should not be. t?? nany politicians will ? in fact, hey already have ? contribute to t worsening of these two grave, national and international prob ems.