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University Daily Kansan Monday. January 15, 1962
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
On Reapportionment
The proposed constitutional amendment introduced last week in the Kansas Senate should not be regarded as a solution to the problem of mal-apportionment of the state Legislature. It is, however, one step toward eliminating the under-representation of urban residents under the present apportionment.
THE BEST PART of the proposed amendment is its provision for a reapportionment board composed of the secretary of state, attorney general, and state auditor—which would reapportion the Senate each 12 years if the Legislature does not act. At present, nothing can be done if the Legislature does not initiate proceedings for reapportionment; it has done so only twice since 1900, and neither apportionment came close to giving the urban counties fair representation.
But the proposed amendment falls down when it limits a county to four Senators. At the present time, this limit would affect only Sedgwick County. The total state population, according to the 1960 federal census, is 2,178,611. Each of the 40 Senators should, therefore, represent 54,465 people. Sedgwick County, under the proposed amendment, could not have the six Senators which its population of 343,231 would entitle it.
But this limit will affect more counties if the population continues to increase more rapidly in the urban areas than in the rural areas. Before too many years, other fast-growing counties may find themselves under-represented in the Senate.
ACTUALLY, THIS section of the proposed amendment is a step backward. Under the present constitution, there is no limit on the number of seats a county can have in the Senate. In practice, no county has ever had more than one seat, but this is not limited in the constitution.
It is unfortunate that the seven Senators who introduced the proposed amendment found it necessary to include the limit of four Senators to a county. But they may have felt such a limit would be necessary for the proposal to have any
Even with its faults, the proposed amendment offers the best hope in years that representation in the state Legislature will at least approach equality for the growing urban centers. Obviously, the present situation cannot continue.
Some people, while they agree that the Senate should be apportioned according to population, contend that the House should continue to be based on geography. They maintain that the House would then be able to represent regional, local, and minority interests, such as rural and western interests.
A SERIES OF articles in the Daily Kansan last week pointed out that the majority of Senate seats is controlled by only one-fourth of the state's population. The four most populous counties—Sedgwick, Wyandotte, Johnson, and Shawnee—have 813,804 residents, nearly 40 per cent of the total population; yet these four counties have only four Senate seats, 10 per cent of the membership.
chance to be passed by the Legislature and the people of Kansas.
FOUR KANSAS newspapermen have filed court actions to force reapportionment of both houses according to population. It is probably true that such a reapportionment would be made only upon orders from a court.
The proposed amendment does not affect the state House of Representatives, which has 125 members. Each of the 105 Kansas counties is guaranteed at least one seat, and the 20 "floating" seats are divided among the more populous counties.
In any case, the proposed constitutional amendment offers a chance for all Kansas residents to be more equally represented in the Senate and is the first step toward complete equality in both houses. It is hoped that the amendment will be approved in the Legislature this session and by the people of Kansas in November.
—Clayton Keller
A Legion Officer on Communism
... Letters
Communists WANT acceptance on our campuses because this HELPS communism. Such acceptance serves to lend credibility and respectability to the BIG LIE that communists are only members of another political party—and not the servants of an international conspiracy pledged to destroy every value of our Judeo-Christian civilization.
The communist who appeared as an invited and honored guest of KU is an agent of the same conspiracy which defied a United Nations team sent to unite Korea by an All-Korean election; and then engineered a war of aggression which killed over 50,000 Americans. The reception of the Soviet Counsel reveals the tragic and amoral "double standard" which is applied in dealing with our com-
own country:
The great issue is not: should the communists speak—but where?
munist enemies. WOULD THE MANAGEMENT OF KU HAVE RECEIVED AN IMPORTANT NAZI OR FASCIST OFFICIAL AFTER FORCES UNDER THEIR SPONSORSHIP HAD KILLED OVER 50,000 AMERICANS?
Our universities are a MAIN TARGET of communist operations. Hundreds of communists agents have been recruited and conditioned on American university campuses. Communists are masters of deceit. They claim rights in free nations which they deny to their own socialist slaves. The right of free speech is not involved in Fomin's case. He is not a U.S. citizen. As a matter of fact, he has no more right to free speech here than he does in his own country!
We contend that American tax-supported colleges are no place for communists or their fellow-travelers. For this principle, the Patrick Henry Post shall continue a forthright and unwavering fight!
Daily Hansan
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912
University of Kansas student newspaper
Vernon L. Williams
Vice-Commander
Patrick Henry Post No. 144
150 North Oliver
Wichita, Kansas
Telephone VIking 3-2700
Extension 711, news room
Extension 376, business office
Tom Turner ... Managing Editor
Linda Swander, Fred Zimmerman, Assistant Managing Editors; Kelly Smith, City Editor; Bill Sheldon, Sports Editor; Barbara Howell, Society Editor.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
(Editor's note: The Patrick Henry American Legion post in Wichita raised strong objections to the two speakers at KU's World Crisis Day last December, Alexander Fomin, a Soviet embassy official, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. an adviser to President Kennedy. The post is a splinter group that formed because it could not practice its program of "Americanism" in the post its members formerly belonged to. Its criticism of World Crisis Day was condemned by many public officials and such newspapers as the Kansas City Star, Hutchinson News and Wichita Eagle.)
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.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Tom Brown Business Manager Don Gergick, Advertising Manager; Bonnie McCullough, Circulation Manager; David Weins, National Advertising Manager; Charles Martinache, Classified Advertising Manager; Hal Smith, Promotion Manager.
Short Ones
I know I would be different if people only called me by my inside name. Spike. —Bernard (from a panel by Jules Feifer)
The insecure academician is more dangerous than the myopic deer hunter. It is possible to refuse to license the hunter. But nobody protects the students from the man who is not strong enough to lead them, not convinced enough to teach them. —William Gerald Manley
.. ..
Harry Truman once had a sage word of advice for statesmen and politicians who fretted under the stings of partisan criticism and the responsibilities of public office: "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen and let someone else do the cooking." —William D. Patterson
- SO TIKED TODAY I ALMOST FELL ASLEEP IN CLASS.
By Calder M. Pickett Professor of Journalism
THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE, by Harold Frederic. Doubleday Dolphin, 95 cents.
Though it lacks the finesse of some other books of its time. "The Damnation of Theron Ware" may be put down as an underrated novel of the naturalistic movement and one that compares favorably with Garland, Howells, Crane and Dreiser. It is a foreshadowing of "Elmer Gantry," but it holds up much better than that latter-day attack on the ministry.
Theron Ware, like Elmer, is a minister out of the revival tradition. When he is assigned by the Methodist Church to a position in a small town in upper New York state, Ware slowly degenerates, morally and spiritually.
HE IS AN UNLEARNED MAN who, like Sinclair Lewis' Carol Kennicott, blames the smallness and meanness of his village for the weaknesses within himself. He comes to know the sophisticated Catholic priest in the town of Octavius, and then the doctor friend of the priest and a rich Catholic girl who plays Chopin in the moonlight and gives Ware some false and materialistic values.
Ware also becomes a close friend of a woman hired by the Methodists to come around at revival time and raise money. He finds that she has no special belief in the church, and he gradually drifts away from his wife and from the church and places all the blame upon Methodism instead of upon Theron Ware.
Whether Frederic is condemning his hero or condemning society is unsure. He has a disturbing practice of shifting momentarily from the central focus of Theron Ware to other characters in the novel, so that we momentarily are allowed to look into other minds. But never for long. All this aside, "The Damnation of Theron Ware" remains an honest and penetrating study of man and his society.
***
UP, INTO THE SINGING MOUNTAIN, by Richard Llewellyn. Cardinal. 50 cents.
Llewellyn has been off his stride since "None but the Lonely Heart," and that was back around 1943. He has tried with this book, which appeared first in early 1960, to give us a sequel to "How Green Was My Valley," but except for the sometimes expressive lilt of the Welsh idiom the book fails.
lift of the Welsh idiom the book runs. Its setting no longer is Wales. Huw Morgan has become a cabinet maker, and his fortunes take him to the new world, not to the United States but to Patagonia in southern Argentina, to a Welsh colony.
Huw is still the fiercely independent person his parents taught him to be, and all he gets from the people in Patagonia is trouble. One might suggest, though, that Huw worked overtime at being a nonconformist. He picked the defrocked minister of "How Green Was My Valley," Mr. Gruffydd, as his best friend. He lived in the home of a widow and soon shared bed as well as breakfast table with her. He made enemies with the most powerful people in the area. He preferred to read the English Bible over the Welsh, and he was quite outspoken about going to church at any time. And he made a coffin for a nonbeliever.
All bad things, of course, to some people, at any rate, and we can cheer Huw for his independence and honesty as we become annoyed at his churlishness. The trouble is, we also can get lost, for Llewellyn is trying so hard with the Welsh touch that he frequently loses the reader. It is a dramatic tale, but not an important one, and, even sadder to relate, it probably isn't even good enough for Hollywood.