ESTABLISHED JULY. 1*36 j TRENA P. POX. EDITOR k PUBLISHER ' IHSS. ZOE YOUNG. ASSOCIATE EDITOB 1 THURMAN L. BROWN, SHOP MANAGER ARCHIE H. BALLEW, PHOTOGRAPHER k PRESSMAN PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY BY YANCEY PUBLISHING COMPANY SECOND CLASS POSTAGE PAID AT BURNSVILLE. N. C THURSDAY. JAN. 11, ISW NUMBER NINETEEN v. * > SUBSCRIPTION RATES SS.OO PER YEAR CUT OF COUNTY $4.00 PER YEAR Scene From Top 0’ The Hill By: Jack Kelly Congress w.ll be back in ses sion any day now and its Mem bers have a bit.cl a job cut out for them. They have to do some thing about the money situa tion even as you and I. The only dfferrence, and a huge difference it is, between Con gress figuring out the money deal fur the Country and our figur ng out the personal domes tic situation, is that Congress doesn't understand money and nuist do something about it, whereas you and I do not under- Maud money and do not have to sihr rfrrjrthmr ’SbdDr'Mt.- Stands miv.-d up o Os course it does. M°ney is all m xed up. We have easy we just tote up what >•< 'M.. and pay what we can. us. -» dollar is a dollar. With (or,gross, things are different. A dollar is not necessarily a dollar any more. Value is the key word. From , it we got valuation, de-valua tion and re-evaluation. The Brit st pound is worth so many dollars a certain amount of fcanrs equal a dollar; and so forth Wliqt does a dollar equal? That is the big question. Frank ly no one knows. Brill ant eco nomists write today and com pare our dollar with what their figures show ti was worth back n 1 o:i,> or whatever year they •’hose. 'o equate it with. When we accept their figures, we learn 'hat our present dollar is worth only 40 .>r 45c or somesuch fig ure due to the fact that a ; five dollar trill back then w*uld have purchased twice as much in the grocery store as it w'll today. Those figures are ckay so long as ;eu don't tear them apart. Those figures are accurate so lore as you do not include such farts as the present salary of •’P idoyecs in the grocery, store oi’ich are bxtav much !*'nn thev wore back in the s°’s >f ~.,1 d'vbt it, copper w'lh HrotPer Peterson or fK e Ray Brothers i also, the nurrbaser re rei‘-es a comwensnrafe and higher salary than he did way hack then As a matter of fact, no matter what the economists cla m the dollar is worth, every one seems to have more of them now than, they did back then. Wo still buy our grocer es. pay our rent or mortgage, and we slid have a few bucks more than wn did. On that basis, the _ dollar is worth more than it was. As a younger fellow, away back in school-days. I once read Adam Smith’s Wealth of Na turns I didn't understand it then (( for te 'he fact I passed an exam on it) and I read it at a much later age ami still d d no*, understand it! Even today, 1 road financial r.rt cles and keep right along! with the wrter un- Id a certain pont then whammy' I «m lost The most recent lost - cause to s:e was the Trending of an expla nation of the "Euro-Dollar*".' These are actual dollars, used in trade, but you can’t get any. You can’t see them. No one has etfer seen them. The most re cent explanation of them that I read stated that they are used in bus ness deals of one-quarter ft a million to ten million dol lars, and are constantly loaned and borrowed by businessmen by telephone and teletype and recorded in the ledgers of banka and b g businesses. These dol lars are in common usaee in Europe, South America, Canada and Japan. They work like th s: . ~X» Company in Be , gium delivers rubber boots to Spain. Three months later, Spain has to pay 5 mill cn bucks to the X Com pany. Meanwhile, the As : atic place that funvshed the rubber for the boots manufactured has to be paid 2 mill on bucks that the X Company doesn’t have. TTtus we have two companies in bad shape fnancially. If Spam pays X, then X can pay As'a. However, Spain can’t pav for 31 days. Asia can’t wait 90 days. X Company doesn’t have the cash. Now comes the “Euro- Dollars*’. X Company. be : ng re liable. phones its bank and. in less than five minutes, borrows the money for the Asiatic pay ment, then sits back and waMs for the Span sh payment. X\. When the other money comes in flvm Spain, the X C..mpany can take .t or put it into the Bank that handles the ‘‘Euro- Dollars’’ and get. interest, be cause its money is now being loaned to other companies that find then.selves in a bnd. It all makes a lot of sense when I read it but I keep wondering if it isn't some sort of a continu ing bubble that, if one of them gets busted, m ght blow up in everybody’s face. The present estimate is that there are some 15 billion of these dollars floating about and keep ing the- internal onal bus nesses afloat. 1 hope they are not as shadowy and disreputable as they appear to my be clouded and mixed-up mind. These "Euro Dollars" if my under stand ng is correct, are funds not, repeat not, controlled by any Government, yet they are dollars that our Country has to account for. I am happy that I do not understand it because that would lie an additional wor ry and I have just enough right now. However, if you are short qn worries, feel free to take th : s «W to vour bosom If 'i n.u. )i! fei 'he shortness of space, 1 could really mix aU of us up by going into some of the experts views on .."devalua tion” of the various monevs and -the “Gold Standard" or lack of it. The more you read on those * subjects, the oftener you fnd yourse'f shj>k ; " ,T your back, talking to yourself, and other things that make you feel real stupd IT NEVER FAILS "'WT IT AIN’T MV UNCLE THERE W I tell vfou ym inspirin' me yr ocua -wveNreo I futur£ in it» don ■ Tuts kid op W enough to put I a auto Tiee j aviecwe an' spencer 1 “min£ is a boon a poot in it i I that coul© toacv has already Ja C'mon wexel J death at p/i L tpvin’ V No Reliable Method Known To Determine Sox Os Child Before Birth CHAPEL HILL The expect ant mother who asks her doctor whether to paint the baby’s ft V \ or blue is triggering a guessiog game that dates back as far as childbirth. But despite all the medical progress since childbirth hegan doctors still come up with ans wers little more reliable than anyone else. The sex of babies continues to resist predictability. Doctors know a lot of new things about heredity. Using X-ray, they can sneak a peek at an unborn baby’s bone development for a sex clue. And they have one other fairly reliable gimmick: they can count the unborn baby’s heart beats. If the heart rate just be fore birth is 120 or less, bet on a male; if 140 beats or more, think female. “We still go with the laws of probabilities,” confesses Dr. Robert A. Ross, former chair man of the Department of Ob stetrics and Gynecology at the University of North Carolina of School of Medicine. "We haven’t found a complet ely reliable method ye t to de termine sex before birth.” The laws of probabilities the mathematical tools for mea suring chance suggest there’s just about an equal chance of a baby being born male or fe male. Ken Poole, a graduate student in biostatistics at the UNC School of Public Health, says that each chance of having a boy or girl baby is like each chance of drawing a red or black card from a deck of play ing cards provided you re place each card before you draw again. But, interjects Dr. John B. Graham, UNC pathologist and geneticist. “Having babies isn’t exactly like drawing cards or like flipping a coin.” He says there’s no “definitely established biological pattern for it," but he knows that a sperm bearing the chromosome which determines the male character istic has a slightly greater chan ce of mating with an egg than a sperm with the female charac teristic the odds being about 115 to 100 in the male’s favor. This alters the laws of proba bilities slightly in the early stag es of the game. But this natural biological phenomenon doesn't do much to favor the actual birth of boy babies. Somewhere between concep tion and birth, the male advan tage declines. Glenn A. Flinch urn, chief of the Statistics Section for the N. €. State Board of Health in Raleigh, reports that the sex ratio of births in North Carolina have averaged about 105 males to 100 females “for as far back as we have reliable data avail able." Generally, then, you’ve got about one chance out of two of having a baby of either sex. And this law of probability applies each time you expect a child. “A common fallacy," Poole points out, “is in thinking that if you have a string of one sex, the next child will probably be the other sex. “This isn’t necessarily true be cause you still have one chance in two of continuing the string." Suppose a couple wants to have two children. What are the chances of one boy and one gir l ? Two hoys? Two girls? Since boys and girls are born with equal frequency, you nor mally would figure on three possibilities. You’d figure one chance in three of having any one of the three possibilities. But here’s another common fallacy. Actually, Poole says, there are four possibilities: a boy first and a girl second; a girl first and a boy second; two boys; two girls. There’s one chance in four, then, of any one of the sequen ces. But given a girl first, you still have a 50-50 chance of ano ther girl. Or given a boy first, there’s one chance in two of a second boy. Suppose you have no children. What are the chances of having' three boys in a row? Three girls in a row? One chance in eight. SSuppose your family planning calls for four children. What are the chances of a string of four boys or a string of four girls? One chance in 16. What is the possibility of two boys and two girls? Three, chances in eight. Is it pure chance when a fam ily has 10 kids and they’re all boys or all girls? “Yes," says Poole. “This could happen by chance, but it’s one chance in 1,024." Dr Graham agrees and disa grees with this statement He suggests it might 1* helpful to study carefully the families in which all the children are of one sex only. He believes some long strings of one sex could occur by chance alone. “But," he adds, “seme may have occurred this way for reasons which would help all of us if we could ex plain it." While the theory of probability seems to dominate the mathe matics of sex, doctors are cau tious and sometimes cagey about their predictions. It is not uncommon for a doc tor to predict a boy while in the presence of the expectant parents and then proceed to write “girl" on the. hospital re cord. This is called “hedging your bets.” Another practice is to predict a girl if the family wants a boy. The philosophy here is that the doctor is correct about half the time. When he is incorrect, the er ror is forgotten or forgiven dur ing the rejoicing over the arriv al of the desired sex. The doctor who doesn’t like to take chances with probabili ties and is leary of philosophi cal answers usually reacts in the is-it-going - to- be-a-boy. -or girl query with a simple: "Well, it usually is." Census To Be Taken During the week of January 15, the Bureau of the Census will obtain informal on from work ing people in this area on the length of tir-.e they have been cn their present jobs, accord ng to Director Joseph R. Norwood of the Census Bureau’s Region al Office in Charlotte. This job tenure informat'on is, being obtained for the U. S. De partment of Labor's Bureau of Statistics. The question wll be asked 'n addition to the regular monthly inqu'ries on employ ment and unemployment includ ed every month in the Bureau’s Current Population Survey. The informat’on w,-j Ve w a yne«- 1 ville, N C 23736