those two well known
Luce Slid Sena
tor Morse. If a horse must be credited with
kicking Morse in the head, it should be re
minded that it could not have lessened the
irrational behavior of Oregon’s turncoat
solon. As ta Madame Luce, she is a lovely,
witty woman with a rich and influential
husband, who perhaps more than anyone
else resents that fifie is not going to Brazil
nest two years.
Field Marshal .Montgomery proves one
point that Americans should already be
quite aware of: That military rank, and
even some little military success does not
equip a man for the field of high politics.
Each field commander must above all be a
supreme egotist, and any deviation from
his egotism is wrong even if it is successful.
The hymn-chanting student body of a
Florida negro college has collected some
thing more than its quota of headlines by
going on a “hunger strike” between break
fast and lunch in protest over the rape of
a coed from their midst. This is about as
practical, and effective, as refusing to
breathe because the neighbor’s kid has giv
en one’s son a licking. We deplore—without
hymns, please—the reported brutal rape
of this girl and believe that the full penalty
of the law should be extracted from those
who may be proven guilty, but we deplore
equally the platitudinous vomiting of these
sainted students who are so revolted at the
idea of illegal intercourse. Goodness, their
mothers perhaps never took the time to tell
them about the “Birds and Bees” ...
Editorial pages across the land are being
printed in blood-red ink over the Mississip
pi lynching of a negro charged with rape
of a pregnant white woman. Hardly an edi
torial eyebrow was lifted a year or so ago
when a negro was lynched in Boston for
living with a white whore. Such goings-on
in the hypocritical north are murders, in
the South they are lynchings. Our meager
understanding of the English language does
not permit us to understand how the shot
gun slaying of a negro boy by white youths
in Chicago is any different than the unfor
tunate Mississippi murder.
“Cat” Johnson says the only recent gov
ernment action the NAACP has not com
plained about was the selection of the seven
men, one of whom is to be first into outer
space. So far, the legal department of the
NAACP has not filed suit because no negro
was included in this group. «
This week’s election in Kinston surely
was one in which the voter could not com
plain about a lack of choiqe when voting
for alderman. After voting,, it seems worse
to have so many candidates than to have
too few. With an elegant sufficiency it
surely takes a lot longer to make up one’s
mind.
The tragedy in the old reservoir at Hines
Mill this week proves again one fact: Never
underestimate the power of a small child
to get into trouble. Fortunately, most of the
trouble is more aggravating than tragic, but
there is a thin line between mischief and
tragedy.
Lenoir County’s third highway death of
the year came Saturday from one of those
“impossible to imagine" accidents. Sunny
skies, straight, dry road, light traffic; yet,
for some reason a young man’s car swerved
into the wrong lane just for the seconds it
takes to snuff out' a mother’s life.
Perhaps we should he sorry for the
ate of affairs in the State, of Mid
^Bfver Tfieught I'd Become A Political Issue'
EDITORIALS
Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Og inion Of O
.
' "r . ■ . ,r::.-.-.7-rXu,,--■■-■g=g==
To Lenoir Memorial Staff Members
This editorial is ah open letter to the
medical staff of Lenoir Memorial Hospital,
addressed in the hope that these doctors
will recognize their responsibility to the
community they serve and take immediate
steps to correct the abuse they cause to
fall upon their hospital and their profes
sion in general.
- This week Jesse Oglesby, chairman of the
hospital’s trustees, and Ellis Pierce, admin
istrator, appeared before the county com
missioners seeking nearly >$70,000 for Oddi
s' residence at the hos
tions to the nurses'
pital. In the course of his remarks Oglesby
said in substance, “in spite of unfavorable
publicity we still have a good hospital/’
Since this writer is one of those respon
sible for at least a part of that unfavorable
publicity Oglesby referred to, we repeat
here What we told Oglesby and the county
commissioners.
We agree that Lenoir Memorial is a good
hospital. It has an excellent staff of highly
qualified doctors. It is well staffed admin
istratively with good nurses, dieticians and
all the other people required to keep a
modern hospital running smoothly.
We have never criticized the hospital,
nor its administrative staff, but we have re
peatedly criticized the medical staff of the
hospital for refusing to provide 24-hour,
seven-days-to-the-week medical care at this
hospital.
We have done this without a single selfish
motive and with only two objects in mind:
First, to seek to guarantee medical care to
those .who come to this county-owned hos
pital; and secondly, to protect the good
name of doctors themselves.
Doctors spend hundreds of thousands of
states.
——
Monday the United States Supreme Court
in a 5-4 decision shoved our nation one step
nearer the socialistic dictatorship that it so
unanimously supports. This latest push into
the bureaucratic jungle wipes out the* sanc
tity of a man’s home by sanctioning the
entering and searching of private dwellings
warrant by health officials. The
dollars every year in the United States
fighting socialised medicine. Currently in
Kinston the medical profession is carrying
the ball in the fight to eliminate textbooks
that are slanted most favorably toward state
socialism than toward our once-cherished
capitalistic society. But for every solid lick
the doctors make in this .direction they
negatively make a hundred in the opposite
direction by setting themselves up as an in
tellectual elite corps, above criticism and,
what’s worse, above plain common sense.
Chairman Oglesby told the county com
missioners that his group has used, and is
using every possible persuasion upon the
medical staff of the hospital to get round
the-clock medical service in this facility.
Everything from «sweet talk to browbeat
ing” has been used, he pointed out. And
with what success? _
Oglesby said that last month the medical
staff of the hospital, ,in answer to the latest
effort of the trustees in this direction, had
filed a report to the trustees which said in
substance it is impractical to^have 24-hour
to-the-day medical service in this hospital.
There, it seems to us, is the point where
the doctors of this hospital, or at least their
spokesmen, raised themselves completely
beyond the realm of common sense..
H it is not practical to have 24-hour-per
day medical service at a hospital, how many
hours do these doctors suggest it is prac
tical to have a doctor?
To one whose medical background is
something! less than a Johns Hopkins de
gree, we suggest that the time doctors are
needed is when people are badly sick, badly
injured, or are just badly wanting a doctor
to examine them.
This is not an easy -life for a doctor, but
when the emergency needs of a small hos
pital can be spread over a staff of more
than 20 doctors, the duty is. less strenuous
and certainly no mechanical problem.
Doctors complaid about poor public rela
tions, they damn and re-damn the press,
yet they refuse to publicize their good
works under some ally slavishness to what
is loosely referred to as a “Code of Ethics.”
But when their errors, both of omission and
commission catch up with them in the pub
lic - '' - ..
tl
print,
ence.
JACK RIDES
■-V.4/ . Zi'.s ' -r
fiver since 1929 when my lather wee fiat
elected to the Kinston Board of Aldermen
I have had a dee? interest in city attain,
and although I was only 12 yean old then
I had enough curiosity to ask a lot of ques
tions and to stick my nose into a lot of af
fairs. For good or bad in the 30 yean since
1929, I have learned a good hit about the
workings of one city government. Although
each town or city is different in some re
spects from each other* they do have some
thing h» common, in fact, much in common.
Police, fire, health protection, streets,,
water, sewage disposal, garbage collection,
recreation programs exist to one degree or
another in every village large enough to
tall itself a town. The better the levels of
service in each of these categories the
better the town. Just having an excellent
record, in -any one of these several cate
gories does not make a good town. A good
town must have good or excellent services
in each of these categories. Viewed in that
light, Kinston is a good town.
Kinston did not get to be a good town
accidentally. The continuing work and in
telligent interest of many citizens present
and past went into the making. Kinston offi
cials have been willing to swim upstream
against the difficult current of unrealistic
conservatism that exists in every small
town, among that group of citizens who be
lieve “if it was good enough for grandpa,
it’s good enough for us today.” To imple
ment the programs that leaders have fos
tered nothing could have been achieved
without day-by-day application of these pro
grams by dedicated public servants. From
the men who pick up garbage to the city
manager, Kinston has been blessed with
able men and women who have worked hard
for small wages, and at times damned small
thanks.
Every two years Kinston is caught up in
the fever of electing a mayor and board of
aldermen. Wild charges are scattered about,
wilder promises are made by young or inex
perienced candidates who either do not
:
the yean Kinston has been un
usually fortunate in that few of this reck
less breed have actually ever been elected
in sufficient number to badly damage the
machinery which operates the multiple
services of the town. And all but the most
reckless once in office soon learn that loose
rumor, -wild charges and silly promises
have very little place in running a progres
sive government.
Since 1900 Kinston has grown from 4,108
to an estimated 23,00Q today. Geographic
ally, it has expanded in almost the same
ratio. While growing so rapidly the govern
mental services have not only kept pace
but have kept up with the changing times,
since many of the services we take for
granted today were not dreamed of in 1900.
Some wise man has said that power—even
the power of an alderman—either ennobles
or degrades its possessor. Kinston has been
fortunate in having had leaders whose pow
er more often ennobled than degraded.
No matter what the voters of Kinston do
this week in selecting their leaders for the
next two years, the solid base upon which
the city's really good government is based
will still stand and provide the quality ser
vices that its citizens have grown accus
tomed to and now expect.
The slyest man or woman elected to office
with the longest “knife” and imbued with
the most vindictive nature generally find
themselves disarmed by the importance of
their job and the checks and balances which
surround their official activities. This, of
course, makes a lot of people unhappy.
They vote for a particular candidate because
he has maliciously or mischievously prom
ised to “fire old so-and-so” and when so-and
so’s scalp is not hung-out for the blood
thirsty to admire, they feel betrayed1. Ac
tually, this type is-betrayed by its own
vanality much more than the chicanery of
the person for whom they voted.
JONES JOURNAL
■TACK rider, ruBusher
Published Every TJiuipday toy The Lenoir
County News Company, Inc., 408 Wert
Vernon, Ave., Kinston, N. C., Phone 5415.