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University Daily Kansan Wednesday, Jan. 17 1962
The Sunday Blue Law
"Every person who shall sell or expose to sale any goods, wares, or merchandise, or shall keep open any grocery, on the first day of the week, commonly called Sunday, shall on conviction be adjudged guilty of a misdemeanor, and fined not exceeding fifty dollars."
So reads the "Sunday blue law" of the state of Kansas. It is accompanied by another Kansas law stating that no person shall labor or compel "his apprentice, servant, or any other person under his charge" to perform labor other than "household offices of daily necessity, or other works of necessity and charity on Sunday." For violating this law, the offender can be fined a maximum of $25.
For instance, in Missouri, which has similar "blue laws," the state attorney general has been criticized for enforcing the laws. Last week, the state association of prosecuting attorneys voted to prosecute only "gross and flagrant" violations of the law.
THESE "BLUE LAWS" are archaic. Enforcement of them provides a ludicrous spectacle for anyone who cares to read about it.
In Kansas City policemen in plain clothes entered stores to see if sales were being made properly.
Yet a Kansas City sheriff said his men were not checking Sunday sales. He said major crime has increased and that he did not think his men should devote their time to Sunday violations, and that heavy snow kept most people at home.
on the constitutionality of the Kansas "blue laws" provoked an attorney into the discussion of the fact that the sale of dog food for a city dog did not constitute a violation of the Sunday closing law but that sale for a country dog did.
IN THE KANSAS Supreme Court, a hearing
The "blue laws" are too vague to be of any good whatsoever. A Lyons county court has declared the Kansas Sunday closing law to be inoperative. The decision was appealed and at present is before the Kansas Supreme Court.
THE LAW IS inoperative not so much because of its vagueness, but because it is not supported by the people. It sprang from the territorial statutes of 1855. It was meant for another era with different attitudes and a different way of life.
People who favor the statute argue that the Sunday closing law gives people a chance to take a day off, to rest at home with the family. They say he can easily buy his goods on a day other than Sunday.
But this argument is an anachronism in the hectic pace of modern American life. It is not the place of the law to tell people when they must work and when they must stop.
A LAW SUCH as the Kansas Sunday closing law which is contrary to the mores of the people it seeks to regulate has no function. The law must be supported by the people. The failure of prohibition should have made this clear.
The Kansas Sunday closing laws have no place in the statutes of Kansas.
—Karl Koch
Editor Found '30s Exciting
By Joseph E. Doctor
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
When I came to KU as a second semester junior in 1934, it was mid-Depression, and the dust was still blowing. Times were tough and I suppose I was one of the poorest students, at least financially, on the campus. I arrived in February and after I'd paid my room rent for two weeks, my student fees, and bought a couple of notebooks I had $5 left and had no idea where my next buck was coming from. My father, who was barely finding, enough work to support himself, and my brother, who was practicing medicine in Phillips county and was being paid in off in hog meat, chickens, eggs, and firewood, managed to come through with a few bucks now and then and I got some work planting shrubs and shoveling snow on the campus. A really square meal was a big event.
I transferred from UC to KU because Cal had no journalism department and I wanted to major in journalism. USC and Stanford were financially impossible, and I was able to get in KU without paying out of state tuition because my father was still living in Kansas.
Another attraction was the small journalism department and the fact that it ran the Daily Kansan. I had only a year and a half left to make my major. I figured that I would have a better chance to get some college newspaper experience and perhaps a title which would count for something when I had to go job hunting after graduation, for jobs of any kind were extremely scarce in those days.
By the greatest good fortune I happened to land in a rooming house with Bill Blizzard, a sharp guy from Gunnison, Colo., who was earning his way through college from prize money he received by exhibiting seeds at fairs all over the world. Bill was editor of the Kansan, a good politician, and a fine fellow. He is now publisher of the paper at Lake Oswego, near Fortland, Ore.
I was a fair student of journalism and Bill managed to pull the proper political strings to get me the job of editor when I came back to school the following year. I also landed a job in the campus cafeteria, and it was wonderful to eat again.
That wonderful person, Mr. Flint, was head of the department and others of the faculty whom I remember as great inspirations were Dr. Helen Mahan, William Allen
White's biographer, and Mr. Dill, a salty character who was also the AP representative in Lawrence.
Between family troubles, poverty, a big study load, and lack of experience, I was in no condition to do a good job for the Kansan, and one day I sat down and wrote a hot editorial against the Peace Strike the campus librals had fomented. Pappy Flint told me I'd catch hell if I ran it, and sure enough, I did. It turned into quite a teapot tempest but Chancellor Lindley and some others were on my side. However, the student board that ran the Kansan voted by one vote against my stand and I resigned as editor and Bill Blitzard as chairman of the Kansan board. We couldn't get the board to accept our resignations, so we went down to the press room and pulled our names out of the monument just before they locked up the forms on the next day's Kansan.
We turned up in the AP reports as the "first casualties" of the Peace Strike and received letters and phone calls from all over the country, Caroline Harper, a tall, nice looking Phi Beta Kappa from one of the Carolinas, was my managing editor, and AP took pictures of Bill and me giving our resignations to Caroline, who was in the middle. By the time the photo reached the East Coast, Bill and I had been trimmed off, leaving only Caroline.
While I was hanging around after the close of school waiting for Commencement (at which William Allen White was the speaker) the big flood of 1935 took
place, and I went out with Mr. Dill to cover it. The Kaw really put on a show and I, a devoted coward, found out that newspaper reporting can be cold, wet and hazardous
I brought Bill Rodgers of Porterville, Calif. back to school with me during my senior year. We had attended junior college together. He was a year behind me in school and finished at KU with the class of 1936. He, too, was editor of the Kansan.
Kansas.
I have not seen Mt. Oread since I left in a rainstorm the night of graduation. I remember it as the most beautiful campus I have ever seen. I liked everybody, even Sammy Helper, who gave me such a bad time in the peace strike.
My eldest daughter is a sophomore at UC. I am sure she will never have the rich experiences the hundreds of students at KU had working our way through in the heart of the great Depression of the early 1930s.
What a great relief it was when Blizzard, Rodgers and I could scrape up a few extra bucks and relax with a few bottles of "pale and A." the principal ingredient of which came from a chain drug store up in Kansas City. We managed to get up to KC once in a while to hear Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway, and we had a real swinging band on the campus. I learned to love good jazz at KU and still do.
but still so.
But I have written far too much about me, and that's the great failing of old beatup newspaper men.
(Mr. Doctor, Class of '35, is editor of The Sequoia Publishing Co.)
Dailu Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912
Telephone Vlking 3-2700
Extension 711, news room
Extension 376, business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 St., New York 22, N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays, University holidays and examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Ron Gallagher ... Editorial Editor
Bill Mullins and Carrie Merryfield. Assistant Editorial Editors.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Tom Turner Managing Editor Linda Swander, Fred Zimmerman, Assistant Managing Editors; Kelly Smith, City Editor; Bill Sheldon, Sports Editor; Barbara Howell, Society Editor.
"We BETTER RUN BACK AND CHECK THAT SCHEDULE."
The Theater Scene
A 'First' Scores Big
By Richard Currie
A production which grew in emotional intensity stunned the audience in University Theatre Monday night at the opening of Paul Claudel, and Arthur Honegger's "Joan of Arc at the Stake."
With Vera Zorina, guest artist who created the title role for the New York Philharmonic in 1955, the University Theatre performance was the first ever staged by a university.
Divided into ten scenes with no intermission, the oratorio soars in intensity as the flames engulf Joan and she proclaims her faith in God. Claudel conceived the work by selecting "a high point, a summit," in the life of Joan. "The summit of Joan's life was the moment of her death. It is from this vantage point... that Joan views the whole procession of events which led her there."
IN MISS ZORINA'S hands Claudel's intentions are fulfilled magnificently.
She is admirably aided in her accomplishment, though some unfortunate defects displayed themselves irritably in the performance.
Robert Baustian, associate professor of orchestra, has interpreted Honegger's score masterfully, almost too masterfully. For on several occasions the orchestra was blatantly loud, obscuring the chorus and blotting out the dialogue of Miss Zorina. The orchestra's tone superbly fostered the mood set by Miss Zorina, but often it dominated the performance rudely.
ASIDE FROM THESE and other small defects, the production was flawless. Beautifully staged by Jack Brooking, associate professor of speech and drama, "Joan of Arc at the Stake" flows smoothly and recounts Joan's life almost effortlessly. There is no disunity here. Every one on the stage knows what he is doing, and when there are as many as 100 people on the stage at one time, the achievement is considerable. Elizabeth Sherbon, instructor of physical education, has choreographed the production bredly.
The chorus, directed by Clayton Krehbiel, associate professor of chorus music, was not always understood. Dramatically, it approached its task beautifully, the music passion rising swiftly and resolving itself succinctly. The steps and phrases were handled expertly and the group knew what it was doing, but its diction was poor, far below what the University Concert Choir should do.
The costumes, designed by Caroline Kreisel, instructor of speech and drama, were exquisite, perfectly appropriate for the production's theme. But the lighting and the set were the superior technical aspects. Jed Davis, associate professor of speech and drama, has anticipated every move, every scene precisely. Colors flash from royal blue to stark white and crimson red in breath taking fashion. Without the effective lighting I doubt the dramatic tension "Joan of Arc at the Stake" reached could have been achieved.
The set, a Roman Catholic cathedral, designed by Robert Chambers, Lawrence senior, added to the growing emotional intensity with its rugged simplicity soaring into the sky, the set provided an effective contrast against the alternating grandeur and farce which took place on the stage.
TREMENDOUS AS these aspects were, they are dwarfed by the Olympian heights Miss Zorina ascends. Beginning slowly, Miss Zorina creates Joan and makes her an utterly tragic yet supremely victorious figure. The first scenes mock her and she is bewildered and horrified. But as the assurance of her voice returns, Miss Zorina lifts Joan from the depth of sorrow to a tower of strength, bravely facing her doom.
Miss Zorina is ably assisted by the student cast. The most notable of whom were Edward Sooter, Wichita graduate student, who played Poreus and Marva Lou Powell, Topeka graduate student, who played St. Margaret.
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