V* about time they were hitched!*
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EDITORIALS
Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man
_____ And He May Be Wrong
The Titled Era
“A Rose by Any Name Would Smell
as Sweet.”
There is a considerable segment of
the body politic spending a great deal
of effort testing this theory.
Consider, this week we receive a mim
eographed letter from an employee of
Wachovia Bank and Trust Company, who
shall remain anonymous, since it is his
title rather than his royal name that
caught our eye.
He is an “external communications
manager”!
When this neat tribe of eager young
heavers first wormed its way into the
executive woodwork they were called
“public relations men”, but as time pass
ed and these seekers after free adver
tising proliferated and formed their own
little “professional organization” their
original nomenclature became too mun
dane; and so it is now “external commu
nications manager.”
The disease, like most proliferations
of verbiage began in government. It was
government that first elevated the jani
tor to custodian and more recently to
■“building superintendent.”
And lately we have seen welfare
departments re-annointed with official
banana oil and their name now a full
blown mouthful “department of social
services.”
Another governmental bit of hocus
pocus, in my opinion, eliminated one
of the most honorable and descriptive,
titles in all of officialdom: “Farm Agent.
To me that title said a lot. It represented
a "w" who was devoting his career to
helping farmers realize more profit and
more comfort for their labor and invest
ment. But now, idas, the Honorable Farm
Agent has become a “County Extension
Chairman”. Pray tell, what is he extend
ing? The county line, his waist line or
big office staff?
Of course the news trade has not es
caped this title mania. Reporters have
ofthf became correspondents or colum
ists, a semantical metamorphasis that has
not only automatically adorned)’ ttaepi
with the once cherished and^hard-to
get byline but has also extended the ed
itorial opinion to nearly every paragraph
thait gets in print. Reporters, whose only
interest was the facts, are now about as
scarce as the molars of female poultry.
On News Perspectives
If one makes no effort to keep things
in a proper perspective it is very easy
to become both shocked and saddened
at the very thought of people fighting as
they are now fighting in Ireland over
different approaches to the gentle phil
osophy of the Prince of Peace, Jesus
Christ.
But of all the people in the world, we
here in the South should 'be most able
to fully appreciate how badly this Irish
ibrawl is being distorted by over-em
phasis in the news, and especially in
the television coverage it is being given.
Consider, so far only six persons have
been killed and very few have been
badly hurt In this Londonderry airing of
religious intolerance on both the Cath
olic and Protestant sides.
In recent years we have seen too of
ten how badly a minor racial incident in
the South can be blown up by national
news media and now the same thing
is happening to a religious incident in
Ireland. V ■ \
Last week an Irish official said that
the most of the action was taking place
when the cameras were turned on.
About 20 years ago, before electronic
news became the power it is, when En
gland! granted India its independence
nearly a million people were murdered
in the war that, immediately broke out
between the Hindus and Moslems. But
the vast majority of ms were har&ly
aware of that most terrible season which
ended with the partition of that, huge
land into the kindu area of India and
the Moslem country of Pakistan.
We did, however, hear a great deal
f
' ijdzinL J 1 S*
• -r>iiP i i'*"Y" if•
Judicial Hope
' Nojt4 even two judicial robins are like
ly to make the spring sun shine insolar
as the United States Constitution is con
cerned. Put* it does give one more hope
than has been possible in half a genera
tion now that President Nixon has nam
ed Warren Burger chief justice and
Clement Haynesworth associate justice
of the United States Supreme Court.
Both are men whose previous record
includes service in judicial capacity and
whose decisions have been in line with
what the constitution says the powers of
the judiciary really are.
The replace Earl Warren and Abe
Fortes, neither of whom had any prev
ious judicial experience and both of
whom were wedded to the concept that
the supreme court is the supreme power
in our nation rather than the people.
Warren and Fortes both figuratively
and literally spat upon the principle
that only the; people through a three
fourths majority of their state legisla
tures could amend the constitution.
They and their judicial camp follow
ers subscribed to the hew school of
I judicial experiency which believed that
the legal process of constitutional change
was too slow to meet the needs of a rap
idly changing time.
But this was a shortsighted and cheap
ly ignorant view of the noble design
worked out long ago in Philadelphia to
protect minorities from the heavy pres
sure of that transient majority that hap
pened to be in power on any given day.
Many other men have changed their
principles when they have reached the
upper levels of national politics. Lyndon
Johnson is perhaps the most ignoble ex
ample of that type who felt that he had
to get up early every morning and prove
all over again that he did not mean
what he had said as a senator on such
issues as unlimited debate in the senate,
civil rights and many more.
So it is 'possible that the flame of
power may attract Burger and Haynes
worth and tempt them to follow the
primrose Warren path toward judicial
tyranny. But it is more likely that these
experienced men have been able to clear
ly see how the Warren Court permissive
ness has unleashed the criminal elements
of our society on the law-abiding, how
the public schools are being threatened
with total destruction by sociological ex
perimentation and how legislative rep
resentation at the state level has been
brutally corrupted by illegal rulings of
the Warren Court that completely ig
nore all but one phrase of the constitu
tion.
out of Indian Prime Minister Nehru a
bit later on the subject of furor badly
American Negroes were suffering in the
South. But Nehru'never dwelt at much
length on the slaughter of a million of
his fellow countrymen in a very brief
few months. Not to mention the loss
of billions of dollars of property as
these people fought their religious war.
If incidents such as that terrible one
in India and this minor one in Ireland
teach us anything it should1 be that
people are not born to gdt along peace
fully with each other. It is the very
nature of nature to be violent. And it-is
to man's credit that hd has been able to
rise even a few inches above the basic
brutality that dictates the ebb and flow
of all life. . . vegetable and animal.
Surely, this does not infer that we
should fatalistically accept brutality and
strife. We need to, bend every effort as
individuals and as nations to lessen
violent • differences but we should be
philosophically conditioned to accept the
fact,that it is an eternal job that will
always be plagued with more failure
PERSONAL
PARAGRAPHS
"Y jack rider
There is a great deal of official con
cern in' our country oyer the continu
ing merger of big businesses. Many fear
that the end is in sight for the smalL
business. I’m not nearly so pessimistic.
It bigness were, that dominant dino
, saurs would be running the world in
stead of puny little man. \
Thte bigger any business gets the less
efficient it becomes. This is an irrevoc
able rule because size automatically at
taches to any business additional layers
of workers who cannot make decisions
whose interest is totally in payday ra
thet than in doing a better job and
turning out more of a better product
,or service.
Size is necessary in many businesses.
Small plants could not possibly build
cars to compare with the mass-produc
ed product in price, although small
plants cah and do build cars that are
far better in quality. The same is true
of many other products of our technolog
ical society. But every time a mass-pro
duct comes along it automatically creates
a demand for small businesses to bathe
and burp that small egg that has been
layed by the giant industry.
The millions of filling stations, one
man garages, car laundries and tire
stores operated by very small business
men are as vital to the huge car-building
industry as the biggest plant in Detroit.
One cannot long exist without the other.
If size were a guarantee of success
Russia with its huge area or China wth
its massive population would be the
dominant nation in the world, but either
is far below the United States in any -
index of excellence, and such tiny coun
tries as Switzerland have the edge in
many areas over the colossus of America.
So some concern about conglomerates,
mergers and monopolies is proper in a
free society, but too much concerned
aimed against the size of private bus
iness is only a razor’s edge away from
total control of the nation, since free
enterprise is far more basic to individual
freedom than even such preached about
thngs as civil rights.
The man who has been given the right
to vote, the right to fair trial, the right
to equal representation in government
is hardly a free man if he cannot seek
his living in whichever directon he de
sires. The man who is tied to a job —
by paternalistic government, or by mis
directed unionism is a slave no matter
what other kinds of civil libertes he can.
boast;
^ So, protection of the consumer by
threatening the sources of production
can be a boomerang that could be far
mo^e harmful than helpful.
JONES COUNTY JOURNAL
Jack Rideh, Publisher
Published every Thursday by the Lbnoos
County News Company, Inc, 60S North Her
itage Street, Kinston, N. C. 28501, Phone JA
3-2375. Entered as Second Class Matter, May
5, 1949, at Post Office at Trenton, North Caro
lina, nnder the Act of March 3, 1879. .By
mail first cone 13.00 per year pins 3 per cent
North Carolina Sales Tax. Subscription rates
Second class'
naaiolsf -■ 2n niitfntim
at Trenton, N. C