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Open Season
EDITORIALS
Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man
- ■ - — And He May Be Wrong
Should Vote Yes
Every person eligible to vote in the
December 15th tobacco program ref
erendum should vote yes.
Those who occassionally read this
page know our thoughts about govern
ment controls. We’d prefer none, but
there is some discrepancy between what
we prefer and what the nation has and
what so recently 61 per cent of the vot
ers endorsed in the greatest electoral
landslide in our nation’s history.
But even without the “mandate” of
November 3rd it is our view that the
tobacco farmer cannot afford to with
draw from the “mainstream” without
great jeopardy to himself and to the
areas where tobacco production is the
most important industry.
To one degree or another every seg
ment of our economy has some kind of
governmental control. Except for one
year tobacco production has had a “pro
gram” since 1938 and in each triennial
referendum the voters have endorsed
continuation of this program by over
whelming majorities.
Under the law it is necessary for not
less than two-thirds of the farmers vot
ing to approve the program or it auto
matically dies.
Our area has enjoyed an unprecedent
ed prosperity because of the stability
brought to the tobacco growing indus
try, which for generations had been one
of the worst examples of “feast or fam
ine” farming.
This year, faced with the discontent of
a considerable segment of the growers
in the Georgia-Florida growing area,
faced with 19.5 per cent acreage cut
for 1965 and faced finally with the pres
sures of medical statisticians tobacco
has arrived at a very crucial crossroads.
If for any single or group of reasons
a third of those eligible to vote toss out
the present tobacco program the like
lihood of getting another through con
gress is extremely slender since the ma
jor tobacco growing areas have only 22
out of 435 members in the house of
representatives and just 14 out of 100
members in the senate.
Tobacco growers must express them
selves behind this program and hope
to improve it administratively or have
no program to improve upon.
Graphic Lesson
The November 27th issue of the
Christian Science Monitor includes a
world map which outlines the literacy,
or illiteracy levels of all the nations.
This is the most graphic lesson imagin
able to accent the great good of educa
tion and the awesome need for more
education in the world in this mid-20th
century.
Only a handfull of all the nations
have as much as a 90 per cent rate of
literacy. No country in Africa has as
many as 50 per cent of its people capa
ble of reading or writing, and a majori
ty of African nations have literacy rates
of less than 20 per cent Argentina is
the only nation in South America with
as much as a 90 per cent literacy rate.
And while we lucky Americans are
feeling sorry for those poor ignorant
people in other pails of the world we
need to keep before us the knowledge
that the average education of North
Carolinians is a® years, and that among
our adult population even after 60 years
of free public schools there are hun
dreds of thousands of people who can
neither read nor write, and who have
the ability to learn to do this basic first
which opens all the doors of learning.
North Carolina has 380,053 persons
with less than a 5th grade education.
The last study in I960 showed 44,295
high school dropouts in the 16-17 age
range.
This is a continuing challenge to ev
ery community in every corner of the
world, but for those of us living in the
luckier sections it is even more a chal
lenge because we have the facilities and
we know how costly it is to leave a
large segment of society with less edu
cation than it takes to compete in our
automated world.
To us it seems worse that at this date
we should have 10 per cent of our peo
ple illiterate than for The Congo to
have more than 90 per cent of its peo
ple unable to read or write.
The only Americans who should be
uneducated are the. uneducable.
his
^inipi
t jrmn is the proud w
tard child called “Council for Civic Kc
sponsibility;” which is just one more of
the gliberal groups which seeks to stifle
any activity opposing Larsen’s particu
lar brand of state socialism,
Among Larsen’s more widely noted
recent statements is a denial that the
26 million people who voted for Barry
Goldwater were voting for a conserva
tive form of government. He reaches
this conclusion .by asserting that Wil
liam Scranton is not a conservative and
Scranton supported Goldwater.
By this inverted reasoning, we as
sume, Larsen supposes that the 41 mil
lion who voted for Lyndon Johnson
were all socialists. Yet the voter pack
age that slid Johnson to such an over
whelming victory includes the widest
and wildest assortment of voters ever
assembled under any political tent.
Johnson promised every segment of
society something and 61 per cent of
the people believed him. We sincerely
hope that he was telling every segment
the truth, but we must admit to specific
doubts.
But Larsen, living in the vacuum of
his own intellect, is writing new mean
ings into the “mandate” of November
3rd. We suppose he has every right to
make his own guesses, no matter how
wrong they may be.
We frankly admit there was no “vic
tory” in the 26 million votes (includ
ing ours) which Goldwater got, but just
as candidly we have to declare that
Johnson’s house is built of many dif
ferent materials and that on any single
issue, other than the election of John
son himself, there is surely no unan
imity of thought among the 41 million
voters who contributed to his success.
State and Religion
The overwhelming majority of the
clergy has stamped its approval on the
Supreme Court decision which banned
prayer in public schools and these an
notated leaders of the pulpit have stout
ly defended this action as a great land
mark in defining more clearly the sep
aration of state and church.
But even the cleverest painter will
sometimes paint himself into a corner
and ft would now appear that the lib
eral J elements of Christianity are in
just such an embarrassing position.
The same group that persuaded the
supreme court to adopt atheism as the
national religion is now arguing to the
courts of the land that exemption of
church property from taxation and ex
emption of cash donations to churches
and church supported schools is also a
violation of the principle so recently as
serted by these same courts.
Surely the semantics of law and re
ligion equally comprehend the exact cor
rectness of such a claim. It surely is
far more illegal to lavish great wealth
at taxpayer expense on a church or
church supported institution than to
permit the saying of a simple prayer in
a classroom.
One of the biggest reasons for the
political proliferation by the clergy in
recent years has been the greath wealth
which their order has come to repres
ent. And it is inescapably true that this
great wealth is directly due to the num
erous tax exemptions the churches en
joy.
Many elements of the church have in
sisted for a long time that churches
should not be exempt from taxation, es
pecially in view of the fact that a ma
jority of the churches engage to one
degree or another in business ventures
that conflict with those very same pri
vate businesses that are taxed more heav
ily to fill the gap created by the tax ex
emption of church enterprises.
If this atheist, group upset the coun
try witt the prayer edict it wrung out
of the nine empty heads on the supreme
court one’s imagination will not envis
ion the uproar that will result from an
Order ending »M Hmh nf
for churches.
Being something of a history nut my
self, it’s difficult for me to understand
people who have no knowledge of nor
interest in both who and what have
gone before. History — local, sectional,
national and world — should, in my
biased view, have a far more prominent
part in education than it presently en
joys.
After admitting that one’s knowledge
may not help him to make money, shoot
a man to the moon or get elected to
high office it is still my persistent feel
ing that nh man and no nation is any
better than Us roots; and although the
mighty oak does not have to understand
all of the workings of the Udden root
system that makes it live, it is necessary
for the mightiest oak to appreciate that
foundation or it will perish when winds
of adversity push against its outward
bulk.
But I suppose before one can be in
spired ' by history; either personal or
political, it is necessary for him to have
a deep pride in whatever part of that
history he may know about. It would
be difficult in the light of history for
a child to brag about being the son, or
grandson of a Hitler, or a Lee Harvey
Oswald. But in the long story of man
kind there has always been, and there
always will be impediments of assorted
varieties to any serious sense of pride.
We proud and mighty citizens of these
United States would have an awfully
difficult time finding any pride in the
treatment our ancestors imposed upon
the American Indian — and, for that
matter, the treatment we still impose.
But if we put ourselves in the forgot
ten shoes of those earliest settlers, and
have any fair notion of what life in
that frontier was really like we might
also find that it was simply a case in
many instances of “kill or be killed."
Religions may be founded but never
nations on the gentle principle of turn
ing the other cheek. Throughout history
man has sought the help of The Divine
in whatever ventures — good or evil —
his lusts sent him to do. We bless bat
tleships and pray for success to men
sent on the most horrible military mis
sions.
And if we were to dwell at too great
length on any single such issue and fail
to see the entire picture it is likely that
we would become either cynical dere
licts or misguided fanatics of the “do
good” breed.
It is perhaps in this sense that history
can be most valuable to us as individ
uals, for it gives us, or attempts to give
us the entire picture, warped only by
the inclinations or disinclinations of
each historian. But knowledge of history
cannot be simply a collection of one
point of view. For to respect our fathers
and forefathers and the entire spec- .
tram of what we feel to be our own
“private history” we have to know
weaknesses as well as strengths; vices as
well as virtues.
History understood should prevent us
from making the same mistakes and
enhance the possibility of our further
exploitation of earlier successes. That
is why it is so appalling’to know that a
majority of the people in the world to
day are functional illiterates; many of
whom do not even know both their par
ents and a few of whom has a surname
to root them to their culture. The Prime
Continued on Pack 3
JONES JOURNAL
JACK RIDER, publisher
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