*4**4 W...- ....... .41 RALEIGH. N. C., SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 18, 1071 Bible Thought Os The Week "Lot us not l>e weary In well doing for In due season we shall reap If we faint not,” li isn't always fun to visit someone In the Hospital, to rail on an elderly aunt, or to take t gift to a shut-in. But usually Christians Editorial Viewpoint It's Time For Black Colleges To Brag There is a tendency these days for educational gods to belittle the pre dominantly black college, followed by a recommendation for its demise. But the black college “ain’t” dead yet, although state legislatures have cut down to the bone its financial support. There is one thing wo don’t want the public to forget, and that Is that ihe predominantly black college took nothing and created a miracle. Per haps it is better to say many mir acles. It has had to make brick with out straw as did the Children of Israel, down in Egypt. No other class of higher institu tions has performed miracles with so many disadvantaged men and women. -Just last week, something good was reported in the newspaper about Florida A& M University at rallahassee. The State of Florida’s first plant ntroduetory nursery to introduce ami evalute plants with a potential .'or conservation uses was created last week under an agreement with the U. S. Department of Agricul ture and Florida A&M University. Florida doesn’t have enough plants o feed all wildlife in the state, and the nursery is going to solve this problem. The experiments will bo !esigned to get rid of bad plants md select the promising ones that can adapt and survive in different The general theme in public edu ■tion today is “How to stop mass !■ tsing of school children to effect (U ‘segregation?” In Pontiac, Michigan, multitudes ;f whites and blacks, became angry over a desegregation plan that would bus about one-third of the city’s 2 4,000 school pupils. It should be ilso recalled that someone set fire / \[ " i -**\\ , j v j ' ' \. (I TV REACHING FOR NEW ENERGY A major oil company has amanmood, "A promising now technique to greatly Increase the speed and efficiency of drilling deep oil and gas wells In hard rock formations,..’’ The technique involves what the company calls "abrasive jet drilling”. Filed tests of the new method have demonstrated drilling rates four to 20 times faster than the conven tional rotary drilling process. The announce ment goes on to point out that the new drilling technique “..should lead to lower costs in the most expensive drilling areas oilmen have experienced--deep holes, 10,000 loot and be low, where they must hunt more and mere in tensively to replenish dwindling supplies of oil and natural gas.” Once again, technology and oil indust r Initiative are combining to find answers to rising petroleum demands as they have done since the first motorcar took to the road. In the remaining years of this century, the ability of the energy industries to n eot the energy requirements of a rising population will determine the course of our civilization. Authorities have said repeatedly that there are sufficient petroleum and gas resources to meet foreseeable needs. But, they have warned that incentives must be provided in tax and reg ulatory policies if useless minerals lathe earth are to become usable products in the market place. The discovery of an improved method of drillimr oil wells may seem of minor import ance to a non-oil-industr\-oriented layman. But it is not. It could have an Important effect on the price of tomorrow's gasoline or heating oil. More important, it could ha , a bearing on whether that gasoline or heating oil is available at anv price. COMMON SENSE For some two decades, diet campaigns have been carried on urgining people to eat less fat, exercise more and otherwise take step to guard against future heart attacks. So far, the campaigns have borne little fruit. Conse quently, proposals have been made to regulate the diet of the American population ! law, although there are substantial differences of opinion as to the relationship of diet in such things as heart disease. The advice of physicians, which suggests that healthy people eat and exercise moder rtely, as a ring of c< n mon sense that can do more to promote good eating habits than ECONOMIC HIGHLIGHTS He notes that, “i.iko urn companies and as sociations whoso successful efforts to combat pollution are told on the following pages, all Americans--including you—must accept a share of the blame for our problems, and also a share of the responsibility for solving them.” In the section on what the timber industry is doing, in behalf of the environment, th( American Forest Institute makes the point that we still have 75 percent as much forest land as when Columbus landed. And, even though we have harvested billions of tons of wood in the last 20 years, we have more trees now than In 1950. The greatest need, it adds, is the adaption of modern forest management to government-owned commercial tiir.berlands. A large auto manufacturer, in its section, reports on the millions of dollars it has spent on ac celerated programs to reduce air pollution from manufacturing plants and to further cut carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon emissions from the cars it produces below the reductions of 70 to 80 percent that'have been accornpLised to date. In another section of The Digest’s environment al feature, the ultimate recycling system is described by a spokesman for the glass con tainer manufacturers. It shows a housewife emptying garbage into a large pneumatic tube which transports household trash directly to a processing center whore materials are mechanically separated for salvage recycling in plants at a nearby industrial park, such a system will, not merely postpone the time when used materials wind up as solid waste, it will solve the whole problem by converting waste into reuseable resources. And so it goes through the list, perfume com panies, can companies, glass manufacturers—all contributing In their own way to the resolution of what The Reader’s Digest calls a major issue of the I97o’s—environmental pollution. As The Digest makes abundantly clear, the technology of an improved environment is within our grasp. Success now depends upon educating the public to the environmental facts of life, 10,000 MORE CAROLINIAN SUBSCRIBERS WANTED NOW! RAYS OF HOPE laws, by decree, the futility of such a course •should be evident from the experience with prohibition. As "Nutrition Today” comments, “...when the government requires a person to do things to protect the individual from his own folly, it is usually abridging the individ ual’s freedom of choice. It is acting not in behalf of society, which is its proper domain, but in the sententious claim that the govern ment alone Is possessed of superior jut* •bent. This is why on a cannot accept the that cigaretts should bo banned, or tha cuttle-raising, dairy, and food indust should he coerced by government Into cm the amounts of saturated fats in our dU And, speaking of free choice, there People who prefoj’ less longevity to the pro pect of long life in company with a govern meat that acts like a nagging wife. A BETTER DEAL Communities never tire of trying to avoid the laws of economics by going into tin* power business. Often, after a number of years of municipal ownership and after financial deb acle, community systems are voted back into private ownership--that is, the ownership of investor-owned, business-managed com panies. 'I lie Worthington, Minnesota, Globe tells why that city would be better off if its municipally owned power system were sold to a taxpay ing, private utility. In 1970, city operations of the plant netted $332,000 -a return on investment of 616 percent. Less than half of this ‘‘profit”, notes the Globe, was used to lower the general tax rate. One-hundred and eighty-two thousand dollars went into a surplus fund to pay for plant expansion. The question asked by the Globe is: “Would Worthington be better off if it were to sell the entire system to an investor-owned utility and invest the money at interest?" Officials have es timated that the city plant could be sold for between $6 and $7 million and calculated that with funds now in surplus, the proceeds could bo invested at interest alone of about $348, 000 a year. "In addition”, observes the Globe, “Worthington would receive substantial tax payments from a private utility. Municipal systems, of course, pay no taxes...” Government ownership of business whether at the local level or at the federal level offers no miracle of efficiency and no eco nomic shortcuts--facts that can sometimes only be learned by costly experience. ‘ With every passing month, it is becoming increasingly evident that curing environmental ! pollution depends almost as much upon public * education as upon technology and industrial pol s 1 ution control programs. More than a year ago, j a major publication, “The Reader’s Digest," announced its intention to develop a massive '' environmental education effort. Ihe Digest, ' G with a circulation of some 17.75 million, was . obviously an ideal vehicle for such an under h To start with, The Digest conducted public 1 opinion studies on pollution and its causes. It found that 72 percent of respondents, partici ; pating in this study, blamed private industry ) for pollution. About half rated the antipol lution jot) being done by industry .as poor or ' very poor, while only 12 percent gave indus try good marks on the antipollution scoie. Ihese adverse attitudes, it found, prevailed"...despite the fact that industry is spending more than $1 billion annually to combat pollution," As a result of its public opinion studies, The Digest formulated a “...total communica tions program disigned to tell the nation and ’ the world what American business is doing tc solve pollution problems,’’ The culmination of this program has appeared in the September, 1971, issue of The Digest In the form of edi torial advertisements sponsored by basic tndus : tries and individual companies. Included are pages ddvoted to the timber Industry, motor companies, producers of cleansers and Insect sprays, manufacturers of glass containers, mak ers of perfumes, cosmetics and hair preparations and can companies. The Digest itself Is shar ing In tlic cost of its “Environment ’7l“ edu cational program because “...the processes con nected with publishing 50 trillion pages a year throughout the world contribute to the creation of pollution Ui£t would not otherwise exist," The “Environment-'7l“ project, embracing 15 to 20 pages of information copy, Is pre faced with a statement by the editor of The Environment Monthly, Mr. William Houseman,