Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man
___ And He May Be Wrong
A Rose by Any Name
It cannot be said too frequently or
too loudly that of all the ample idiocies
recently committed by school boards
none is worse than the sudden changing
of names of schools from what they have
been for a generation.
In Kinston the proposal under “study”
is to renounce Jesse W. Grainger whose
name has adorned the town’s major high
school since 1926 and replace it with
‘ some really significant nomenclature
such as “Kinston High School.”
There must be reason for this con
templated idiocy, but plumb as we may,
until now we’ve found none, and there
is a growing suspicion that there is
none.
The unstated, unmentionable reason
for the school board to seriously consid
er such an idiocy is that by changing
the school names children will be less
reluctant to attend them. The unthink
ing thought is that white children forced
to attend old and perfectly honorable
Adkin High School will go less reluc
-tantly if it-Is called High School No.
1, or East Side High School, or Hilltop
High School and that colored students
mil feel more comfortable at 44 year
old Grainger High School if it is named
Hilltop High No. 2 or Water Tank High
or Pecan High or Park Avenue High
or Compromise High.
And by the same “thought” process
Lewis School will have to go, as will
<g«npnrwi, and Bynum. Somehow North
west and Teachers Memorial seem safe
since they came into being with in
nocuous names that could hardly of
fend, or please anyone.
And while we are changing names
we might as well get the whole job
done at once. We’ve used Kinston just
. . ___..>t. Iwu •
nice appetizing sound and we might ev
en persuade Colonel Sanders to come
down to bust a bucket of Kentucky fried
children over the mayor’s head as we
re-christened our sleepy village.
Why not? It’s been done before. First
it was Kingston then patriotically the
“G” was dropped to make it Kinston
and for one brief period the town name
was changed to Caswell honoring the
state’s first un-Anglicized governor, but
this soon gave way and it became Kins
ton again.
Chicken ville! Roll that on your tongue
with a hot biscuit and see how you
like it.
Another Pollution
Certainly no one can say a kind word
for the dumping of raw sewage into the
nation’s waterways, nor the gushing of
uncountable tons of gaseous pollutants
into the air we breath, but there is at
least -one other pohutionthatmaybe
in the long run of greater concern.
And that is the pollution of the cul
ture by an excess of experts.
This is undoubtedly one of the pnces
of our national affluence, with too many
colleges and universities turning, out
more experts than the culture can easi
ly absorb, and it is these surplus ex
perts that threaten Civilization.
A lazy, unlettered man out of a job
might while away his idle hours sitting
on the lee side of the bam whittling
pith the other neighborhood loafers while
cussing everybody who has two emits
more than the idle, loafing aforemen
tioned whittler and <
into)
equipped^ithll'
u
have now made a complete revolution.
Today unionized thuggery has reduced
much of labor in our country to a level
of servitude Lincoln was supposed to
have ended with the Emancipation Pro
clamation.
Involuntary servitude is a glorified
phase substituted for . the uglier word
of slavery, and today a very large per
cent of the men and women who work
under union dictates do so completely
against their will, because like otter
earlier kinds of slavery it is better than
starvation' for one’s family, or, as we
haverecently so horribly learned in'
the Yablonski Family murder, this union
ized slavery is tetter than the murder
of one and his family.
The only thing unusual at ah about
the miftder of the Yablonski Family is
that it reached so high. Many other
soldiers in the tower echelons of union
ism have been murdered; some even
with their families, but as in the world
of military affairs the generals usually
live longer than privates.
Walter Reuther has been shot and
almost killed, and the huge reward
offered tor conviction of the would-be
Reuther assassain, or assassains was
never collected.
Now that indictments 'have been made
in the Yablonski Affair it is still unlike
ly that the full truth about the affair
will ever be publicly known.
Today just as a generation ago it is
greed that corrupts those who have
power over men. The mine workers’
union involved in the Yablonski Affair
collects over $45 million per year in
dues from its workers and collects an
other $60 million a year royalties on
coal mined. All of which supposedly
goes into medical and retirement ben
efits for those brave men who go into
the earth to bring out this black gold.
The control, and abuse of this more
than $100 million per year is the issue
over which Yablonski and his family died.
The same heavy hand that fell on the
industrialists a generation ago now bad
ly needs to fall on the thugs and thieves
who have so badly infiltrated so much
of organized labor.
and more facts and figures than one
little tain ought to be encumbered
by he cannot fritter away his idle hours
watching a cork bob in a lazily moving
creek, with slow biting fish, much less
pull out a Barlow and convert a dry
piece of wood into neat piles of shav
ings.
Such an eager, idle expert has to ap
ply all of this intelligence he has ab
sorbed at such a high price and so we
suddenly find ourselves drowning in a
sea of ecologists, demographers^ urban
ologists and a light layer, in the fine
arts of course, of pomographers.
And somewhere in the wings, watch
ing this little intellectual drama there
will lurk an industrial angel who will
see a profit in the implementation of'
these nervous .'twitterings by these beau
tiful birds of academic paradise.
!
And with nothing more than this a
“foundation” springs into being, equip
ped with a mimeograph machine and
that, righteousness whit*, gives one lob
byist the strength of a legion and right
away we peasants are being told our
«»th.
President Nixon Monday night in
first veto message touched a very sen
sitive nerve as far as I’m concerned,
when he pointed to the gross inequity of
the so-called impacted areas money for
schools. For the past five years I’ve
been screaming on this subject because
there is absolutely nothing fair about
it. The stated principle is that when
the federal government puts a base or
factory in a given area it so depresses
the economy that the people there need,
help in financing their public schools.
The utter idiocy of such a principle is
evident when one considers that under
federal civil service the lowest paying;
job on the books is now at dose to $3
per hour, and the average annual pay
of -a federal worker is well above $7000.
So counties such as Craven-, Onslow,
Wayne and Cumberland that “suffer”'
this problem not only get this highly
paid collection of federal workers but
at the same time are given liberal doses
of the federal tax money — which is
collected in Lenoir and every other
county just as it is in the “suffering”'
counties.
To accent this robbing Lenoir County
Peters to educate Onslow County Pauls:
in 1967-68 federal allocations to the
13,731 students in Lenoir County
amounted to $1,191,175.23 and in Ons
low County the federal allocation for
13,443 students was $1,387,242.89 and.
to the 13,842 students in Craven Coun
ty’s public schools the federal allocation
was $1,550,565.54. As one result of that
kind of hocus-pocus Onslow County only
had to put up $232,064.78 in load school
funds, Craven County had to ante up
just $550,329.58 and “rich” Lenoir Comi
ty had to lay out $1,317,728.59 in local
funds!
The logic of this kind of unreason
ing, however, seems to be the same kind
of illogic that dominates at every level
of education today. Spend more and
more on less and less. Somewhere this
extravagant road has to 'have a turning
point end hopefully that 'sharp turn
may have been reached Monday night
when Nixon signed his veto message
to congress.
JONES COUNTY JOURNAL
And these are not the worst examples
but just happen to be the most current
and closest to home local figures. Of
course, Wayne County with an air base
dragging its economy down shared in
this same federal paternalism, having
to put only $833,858.52 in local funds
for its 20,591 students, since the fed
eral contribution that year to its schools
was $2,088,326.36.
As President Nixon pointed out: the
wealthiest county in the nation is Mont
gomery County, Maryland which is in
habited almost totally by federal gov
ernment workers, whose average pay
scale is far above the level paid to non
governmental workers and that county
alone was to get $6 million additional
under the bill that he vetoed.