Newspapers / The Pilot (Southern Pines, … / July 31, 1958, edition 1 / Page 2
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Page TWO ILOT North Carolina Southern Pines “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 money for all concerned. Wherever there seems to be an occasion to use our influence for the public good we /will try to do it. And we will treat everybody alike."—James Boyd, May. 23, 1941^^ ' Urgent Need For Water Program The need for a program of water resource development, indicated in Hugh Haynie’s car toon on this page today, was underlined this week by Governor Hodges who said that more than any other one thing such a program will affect the economic future of the state. North Carolina has already recognized the importance of water resources by organiza tion of a State Board of Water Commissioners, a Water Resources committee of the Board of Conservation and Development and an ad visory committee on water resources. It was to these combined groups that the Governor directed his call for action. These boards are considering the draft of a bill for the next General Assembly that would create and outline the operation of watershed districts over the state. Functions that would be carried out by the districts in clude such water conservation measures as flood prevention and control, low flow regu lation 'of streams, water recreation, drainage. reclamation and others. As with our other natural resources, we in the United States have been prodigal and shortsighted in our use of water. We have en joyed it in such abundance that, like the vir gin forests that are now all but gone (except for National and State forests created by the interest of a relatively few individuals), we gave little thought for the future. Now we know that water, like timber, must be con served and cared for. What can be done by conservation of water in a small way has been learned on hundreds, of North Carolina farms where ponds have been built to provide water for crop irriga tion, incidentally furnishing swimming and fishing facilities for farm families and their friends. We are pleased that the Governor has ex pressed the urgency of a water resources pro gram and will follow with interest the course of proposed legislation up to and through the 1959 General Assembly. Calling For Praise, Not Scorn We are pleased to see The New York Times saying: “American education deserves our praise, not scorn.” Thus does the newspaper that gives prob ably the most elaborate coverage of any in the nation to education put into perspective a subject that has been treated ponderously, hysterically .and most every way except ob jectively since Sputnik I was shot aloft by the Russians. We noted a few weeks ago on this page: “Americans would do better to approach the matter of improving the schools not so much through slighting comparisons with European systems as through genuine pride in the his tory of education in this democratic nation— a pride that impels us to take renewed in terest in building well on a foundation that is already well laid.” The Times is not asking for a wholesale blind acceptance of American education, nor does it presume that we in the United States have nothing to learn from educational meth ods abroad. Thousands of words published by The Times in the past few years are testimony to the fact that it is well aware of the short comings of schools in this country. The confidence expressed by The Times in the basic worth of American education is in spired by a report of the United States Office of Education presented at the Twenty-first International Conference on Public Education in Geneva. No other country in the world approaches the U. S. school attendance rec ord: 96.5 per cent of all boys and girls of high school and elementary age. Over 43 mil lion young people—25 per cent of the nation’s population—are in school or college and over 30 million adults are taking part in education programs. As The Pilot noted in the editorial men tioned above, it should be a matter of pride for Americans that 70 per cent of our chil dren are in school at age 16, as compared with. 20 per cent in Europe. Without elaborating the point. The Times also quotes the Office of Education report as saying that qualitatively, too, American schools are doing a good job. Cited specifical ly is the fact that school and community health services are joining to improve the mental, physical and emotional health of children. Of this much we are certain: haphazard, generalized adverse criticism of American ed ucation doesn’t help make it better and, given the fact that many persons are always ready to see' and believe the worst, may hurt the cause. The American people—and that means the people of Southern Pines and Moore County —can, with constructive and enlightened in terest (including generous financial support), get and maintain better schools. Heading For Horror? The Administration has long followed an odd pattern of conduct in its manner of re ceiving what certainly seems like fead news. When the Russian sputnik was launched, the first reaction was stunned dismay, follow ed almost immediately by a direct turnabout. The Madison Avenue public relations boys had jumped into the breach to announce that, actually, this Russian sputnik was just fine. Not, because it was a great scientific feat on which the Russians should be congratulated. Not at all. It was fine because now that the United States was duly warned this nation would spring to action, at long last. It was almost as if the USSR had done us a favor. Similarly when Vice President Nixon was booed, hissed, spat at, and rocked on his “goodwill” tour to South America, this, also was hailed, after the first shock, with exclam ations of satisfaction. Now, said the govern ment spokesmen, we knew where we stood. Next time we would be all prepared and ready to seize the initiative and really go after this goodwill thing in earnest. Then, too, think what courage had been displayed by the Veep: what an inspiration to the nation to see him standing firm under the barrage! Now comes the long-heralded, long-await ed, long-avoided Summit Conference. The Administration seems to be playing tar-baby. Perhaps struck dumb, for once, by the ap proaching ordeal; perhaps simply because it doesn’t know what to say. To Khrushchev OR the American people. So here comes the Christian Science Monitor’s distinguished commentator, Joseph Harsch, happily picking up the Administration’s erstwhile tactics, tongue well-wedged in cheek. Mr. Harsch opines gently that one good thing might result from the unplanned, un scheduled summit meeting. But this one use ful thing has nothing to do with the Marines in Lebanon, or with Iraq, or even with East Germany. Mr. Harsch suggests hopefully that this coming summit conference may prove “such a real horror” that it will never again be attempted to settle foreign policy nego tiations on the summit of anything. Mr. Harsch hopes that this will be the summit conference to end summit conferences. This may be a vain hope, this hope of Mr. Harsch’s. Given the Russian leader’s temper ament, acting ability and aims, and New York City’s lamentable delight and acclaim for al most anything so long as it is exciting—not to mention the availability of thousands Of tele phone books, and other sources of waste paper —and high buildings from which to throw same, it seems only too likely that the Rus sian leader will receive the usual New York ovation, and go on to win further laurels. . Too bad this summit is New York. Now if it were Cheyenne, Wyo., or Central City, Colo., Lynchburg, Va., Skowhegan, ,Me., or even Southern Pines, N. C., we have a feeling the reception might be otherwise. At least that part of the horror could be avoided. Too Much Brains “One Of These Days We Really Oughta Start Rowing” THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1958 i m 'AND THE HOT. HOT SUN BEARS DOWN ..' Tobacco: Epic Of Land And Labor One of the best crops of tobac co this area has seen in many years—that’s the outlook as re ported by farmers and the men who work with them in the pro duction of North Carolina’s big gest money crop. Growing taller daily in the fields of Moore County, tobacco will soon be ready for curing. Then the auction markets open and the fruits of nearly a year’s labor are harvested—labor, on most farms, by all the family. And hard work it is, too. “Tobaccoland, U. S. A.,” by Bruce Stone, appearing in the Raleigh News and Observer re cently, captures impressionisti cally the tone and flavor of the annual tobacco epic, as taking place in the Sandhills and else where in the flue-cured produc tion area. Excerpts from this' item follow: Don’t sass me, boy. Yes, Pa Tobacco. Money. Tobacco. Money. Plow it, fertilize it, pull its suckers. Look! On the leaves! Cutworms! Poison, poison. Kill the green monsters that would eat your profits, take food from our mouths, rob Ma of her new dress. Pa of his new gun, baby of her new doll. Cutworms, cut worms. Kill ’em. Kill ’em. Kill the green monsters. clothes sticky with gum and drip ping sweat. The sticks of green gold piled on the ground have grown into a stack higher than their heads. Pass it into the barn, hang it on the tiers. Be careful of loose leaves. Close the barn doors, turn up the heat, draw the sap from the long, sticky leaves. We are having a hard time keeping up with electronic brains which are getting smarter and smarter—in fact they are so smart now that our ordinary old-fashioned brain is total ly incapable of grasping what our fellow mechanical thinkers are up to anyway. Navy spokesmen assert that they hesitate to call their latest wonder, the Perceptron, a machine, because it is so much like a human being without life. (Our reaction to this sweeping statement is that favored in “Li tile Abner”: “Ugh!”). Perceptron, its (his? her?) designer admits, will make mistakes at first like humans, but then it will grow wiser as it gains experience. Perceptron can now tell whether test squares are on the right or left. Improved models are expected to remember images and information they receive and eventually, it is claimed, be able to recognize people and call out their names. (Wouldn’t THAT be a surprise for the unwary!). The Navy (and by the way why is the Navy doing all this messing around with robots?) says that the principle of the Perceptron will be used to build a thinking machine that will read and write. So it appears that the Perceptron is now in about the cave man stage of development. We will be just as happy not to be around when the Navy gets it up to the equivalent of civil ization. No telling what it will do then. Tobacco land, cotton land, corn land, timber. Animals, vege tables, fruits, and berries. You name it. We’ve got it. The land of plenty. And the people work the lands through the hot summer months. Work it like their parents before them and their grandparents be fore their parents. The people’s children watch and wonder, grow and learn. Someday the land will inherit them and they must know how to please it. The lands, the lands, anything for the lands. Tractors; working over the rolling countryside, grinding, pounding, spitting balls of blue smoke through rusty exhausts. Mules, sweaty, straining, pull ing against the heavy tobacco slides. Tobacco. Tobacco. Money. Mon ey. Money. Strip the leaves from the tall stalks, lay it so carefully in the burlap-sided sled. Giddup, mule, ain’t got all day. Off to the barn with the load of sticky gold, lay it on a bench, hand it to a looper in bundles of three leaves, put it on a stick—not too tight, not too loose—pile it on the ground to await the menfolk. Babies; lying on their backs in cribs under big shade trees, cry ing and waving their limbs fran tically in the stuffy, summer air, Mamas: oblivious to the cries of their young, too busy finger ing the green gold and gossiping to all the other Mamas. Worried about next Sunday’s church meeting. She hasn’t a thing to wear. And the hot, hot sun bears down. Grains of,Sand Library Bulletin £ Nice to kn^w we hr Yt forgot ten by our ^ood fri^ d, former librarian Dorothy A\ y. Mrs. Avery, who was for n any years Moore County librarian, with headquarters here, sent us an in teresting clipping telling of the growth of the Canton library where she is now in charge. Mrs. Lambourne, town librarian, has posted the clipping on the bulle tin board where all who run may read. And we’d suggest well may be not running—not in this kind of weather—but at least a call at the library and a look at the clip ping. There are pictures, too. And very well posed and taken. Margaret Bishop is in' Canton, too, and continuing her helpful work with books in that town. But you won’t find that shy helper in any of the pix! Anybody Else In A Temper? We are. In a bad temper. Noth ing too new about that situation, but right now two things in par ticular are rousing our fury. Here, son, here, you’re discing too shallow. Git that weight on that disc. But, Pa, it was all right this mornin’ over in th’ new ground. That’s ’baccer land over there, son. Soft, black, like walking on pillows. This here is corn land. Hard, clay, lumpy. Git that weight on, son. Yes, Pa. Pa, can I go to th’ pichur show in town tonight? No, son. Why, Pa? Can’t afford it, son. But. Pa, I ain’t been in a month. You heard what I said, boy. Yes, Pa. Tobacco. Tobacco. Money. Money. Money. Take it from the barn, load it on a truck, roll it to the pack- house, and put it on the floor. Grade it. The good goes here, Jhe bad goes there. Get it in order and tie it neat. Excitement ebbs high. Payday is here. Ma struts before a mir ror, wondering how her new dress will look. Pa takes mental shots at a high-flying chicken hawk. And baby prepares a shoebox crib for her brand new doll. The long sticky leaves, made yellow and brown by the heat of kerosene cmers, are loaded on trucks, wagons, trailers, anything that will move. They climb up the embankment and roll onto the highway, turn their noses to ward town and the auction ware house. Sometimes, late in the evening, a little caravan forms and, together, the tired farmers grind their way toward town and the auction warehouse. Tobacco. Tobacco. Money, Money. Money. Lunch time. Menfolk come up from the fields, battered straw hats tipped back on their heads. Pa, can I go fishing? No, son. But why. Pa? I’m so tard and hot. We got v/ork to do, son. Plenty of it. But, Pa, I’m so tard and hot. t)on’t sass me, boy. Yes, Pa. ANOTHER 'GOLDEN PLAN' Negroes Urged To Learn French One is the upping of postal rates while the mammoth loads of cheap second-class mail con tinue to fill postoffices and post- office trash baskets. Not to men tion all other trash baskets in the nation. And not to mention all the fine timber going into the making of such waste paper; the effort; the (yes, it’s there somewhere) brain power that could be making its mark in things that might not be thrown into the trash basket. WHY couldn’t they make this second class mail pay its share of the postoffice work and time it consumes? WHY? Number two is the system of buying “lists” and then letting the “list” run the business. Over and over you get demands to subscribe to this, that, or the other magazine or newspaper. They aren’t always demands: of ten they are gentle, winning let ters, most complimentary. They tell you how you are just the person the magazine or paper has been seeking, just the one to ap preciate its subtle humor, charm ing articles, stimulating political essays. The joker is: you happen to have been a subscriber lor um- teen years. In other words here they had you all the time and apparently they never even knew it. You write a protesting letter only to get back a note blandly passing ever the situation as of little importance. They have their “list,”. and it would take too long and be too expensive to go over it and put you in the cor rect cubbyhole—the cubbyhole marked “SUBSCRIBER” instead of the one marked “POSSIBLE SUCKER.’’ We resent this business, or un business, almost as much as the second-class mail racket. And, furthermore, it scares us. It’s a horrible illustration of the power of the machine. That story about the lone sheepherder out in Montana who suddenly got 7,000 copies of LIFE Magazine dumped at his wagon-gate because the plate in the addressing machine had got stuck is funny, but it’s kind of horrible, too. A scary picture of men doing something close to in sanity because of time and the machine. Look out. Orphan Aimie! ’The machines’ll git you if you don’t watch out! And the hot, hot sun bears down. Built-in. Protection Ran into a gentleman enjoying a summer drink in his favorite local establishment: beer and to mato juice mixed. He’s enthusiastic about it, too. Says it tastes good, but—best of all—the tomato juice provides built-in hangover protection. So far, this beverage has no name. Anybody got any ideas along this line? Tobacco; money crop. Baby it, pamper it, care for it. Checker' the rolling countryside with it. Watch its sticky leaves wave in the breeze. Tobacco, Tobacco. Money. Money. Money. Prepare the ground for its bed, sow it, watch it grow. Spread the pretty white canvas over its ten der shoots. Protect it, boy, protect it. Pull the weeds from its young roots. Now pull the plant, off to the fields, transplant it, water it, watch it grow. Sun; hot, merciless, bearing down. Man; bent, tired, dripping sweat. Pa, I’m so tard and hot. Can I go play now? No, son, we got to push on. But, Pa—. By HARRY GOLDEN In The Carolina Israelite One of the great retail chain stores has put the Golden “Out- of-Order Plan” into operation and with considerable success. They placed an “Out-of-Order” sign on the “white” drinking fountain in most Of their stores in the “Upper” South. Within six weeks everybody was drinking the “colored” water without any bad effects, physical or emotion al; and all the signs came off, “Out-of-Order,” “white” and “colored.” There is a problem, however. In most of these stores they made this experiment in the “Basement,” and naturally they could not put an “Out-of-Order” sign simultaneously on the other floors. The whole idea would have been given away and made matters worse. You throw a tiny pebble into a streapi and you never really know the extent of the ripples. In a seminar on education in Tennessee I suggested to the Ne gro parents to make sure that their children study French im mediately upon entering high scnool. We know of course, that there is no vertical segregation, but if the vertical Negro sudden ly begins to talk French, he can even sit down without creating any serious emotion among the “whites." I had a fellow try this out on the cashier’s line at the A&P store. He suddenly asked the cashier about some product in French, and the “white” folks ahead of him actually broke ranks to give him priority. Of course there could be too much of a good thing. If the Ne groes of the South follow my suggestion it is possible that within twenty years they’ll all be talking French; it would no longer be a novelty. The PILOT Published Every Thursday by THE PILOT, Incorporated Southern Pines. North Carolina 1941—JAMES BOYD—1944 Katharine Boyd .. ^ Editor C. Benedict Associate Editor Vance Derby News Editor Dan S. Ray Gen. Mgr. C. G. Council . Advertising Mary Scott Newton Business Bessie Cameron Smith Society Composing Room Lochamy McLean, Dixie B. Ray, Michael Valen, Jasper Swearingen Thomas Mattocks. Subscription Rates: One Year $4. 6 mos. $2: 3 mos. $1 Entered at the Postoffice at South ern Pines, N. C., as second class mail matter He tl ,i|. _ Member National Editorial Assa and N. C. Press Assa
The Pilot (Southern Pines, N.C.)
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July 31, 1958, edition 1
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