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University Daily Kansan
Afraid of Stopping
The word is that we're still racing the Russians to the moon, and officials in Washington are determined we'll get there first.
But there's a bigger race being run today, one you won't read about in the headlines.
Everyone of us is running for fear of being caught. Caught in some little corner of the world where no one will find us, where nothing moves.
OUR SKYROCKET to success is the University. An education.
This we seem to realize with little doubt. We set aside these four years, or more, to gain our independence from home and to develop the talents we'll need for the future.
We're people on the move, and a college graduate seems well on his way toward security.
But, far too often, the Kansas graduate settles in some other state.
While the total population of Kansas between the years of 1950 and 1958 increased 10.3 per cent, the 18 through 64 age group—the working population—had a rather low increase of 1.9 per cent.
AT THE SAME TIME, the number of children under 18 went up nearly 27 per cent and the elder population. 65 and over, rose 9.6 per cent.
What this means is simply that the same number of Kansas breadwinners must support and educate many more children and provide services for an increased number of senior citizens.
Experts projecting current trends into the future think that by 1970 the school-age group under 18 years of age will have zoomed up 34 per cent. The oldsters will gain 16 per cent, the wage-carners only 15 per cent.
For any state this could be disastrous, and Kansas is certainly not alone in its problem.
As Max Lerner says, to an American, "the sensation of being trapped is the ultimate indignity. So he moves. And his moving keeps alive his sense of social possibility, the belief that something can happen; and as long as something can happen all is not lost."
THE REAL POINT to discover is that it doesn't necessarily follow that the meandering American finds what he's looking for. All along it may be waiting for him right in his own back- yard.
The people of Kansas realize the population dilemma and are working feverishly to make the state more attractive to economic and social development.
Our own expanding University, along with 41 other accredited institutions of higher learning in Kansas, is evidence that an effort is being made to keep the local college student close to home.
More recently, Chancellor Wescoe announced an accelerated program to encourage the state's top high school students to attend KU. And government, business and industry, as well as agriculture, are doing their share to keep Kansas a healthy, forward-looking place in which to live and work.
BUT LITTLE CAN be done without you.
You and your fellow classmates will provide the leadership for tomorrow's progress. You are the essential ingredient of the Kansas product.
We've all heard the plea to stay in school and graduate. Now, here's another.
Stay in Kansas and produce. - Larry Schmidt
It's That Time Again
Ah. politics.
From now until after the Republican convention next summer.all the Republican candidates can be busy publicly denouncing all the other Republican candidates.
Goldwater can say what's wrong with Rocky; Rocky can say what's wrong with Goldwater. In between jibes at each other, they can both rake President Kennedy back and forth across the coals.
Seranton has things to do at home, and so for the time being doesn't have to publicly hate any of the other Republicans.
And then there's Nixon, more or less.
We hear that there's talk of New England states joining together to support a favorite son. One possible favorite mentioned was Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., currently in Viet Nam on business for President Kennedy. He more than likely
will be too busy to hate anybody in print for awhile.
The Democrats, unless something happens like happened to Herbert Hoover, will go with Kennedy again. He, too, is probably too busy with a relatively recalcitrant Congress to hate anybody besides them for awhile.
Then, come next summer, all the Republicans can join hands again and team up on denouncing Kennedy, Cuba, Russia, Kennedy's failure to get Congress to act, Bobby, Birmingham, and the like. Kennedy and Johnson will demonstrate their good record during the past four years, will defend the Alliance for Progress, the quarantine of Cuba, the test-ban treaty, Bobby, and Tito's visit.
They will compare their record to Eisenhower's.
Then, in 1968,...
—In the University of Texas Daily Texan
@1963 HERBLOE
THE WASHINGTON POST
“Observe Closely, Mi Amigo——”
The People Say . . .
Editor:
In Friday's Daily Kansan there appeared an article entitled "Hootenanny Hoot." I agree with the writer's advice to remain at home this weekend.
Country Ain't Folk
The writer, however, made the mistake of thinking that hillbilly music is synonymous with "Hootenanny."
This commercialized, pseudofolk music which is termed "Hootenanny" should not be confused with good country and western music. Country and western artists such as Grandpa Jones and the Lonesome Pines Fiddlers would be appalled if they felt they were being connected with the Hootenanny trash.
No self-respecting folk singer would have anything to do with a Hootenanny, and Hootenannies are completely out of the question for country and western artists.
This pseudo-folk music should have died out with the Kingston Trio. If the college student is so eager for country music, he should tune in to the Grand Ole Oprey, instead of wasting time with Hooten-annies.
Jerry Leisy Wichita senior
Watching Farms Die Like Looking in Coffin
By Tom Coffman
Down in the corn and pig and wheat and cattle country in Osage County, where my home is, there is a new buzz. It's for money. The Pomona Dam, one of Kansas' 29 big federal government-built dams, is almost completed, and the money creature is everywhere.
Whoo-ee people are going to water ski and fish cut there. They'll need groceries, beer, boats, bait . . . houses. We'll build 'em houses. All those folks coming down from Topeka and Kansas City are going to do this old county a lot of good. Yes, sir.
This is the American way. It must be a fine thing. Enterprise, that's the ticket.
I HADN'T BEEN HOME often for two years before this past summer. I had heard the hullabaloo about farmers fighting the government's appropriating their land and the merchants' talk of new money to be made.
The big dam bridges two hills like the web of between a duck's toes. When closed, the dam will back water up to the east for eight miles along Dragoon Creek to U.S. 75 and to the northeast for 10 miles along 110 Mile Creek.
F
N
Like everyone else, I had to see the nearly completed lake site. I drove out alone on a spring afternoon.
The crush of man's machines had played heavily on the two valleys, and on that day I took no pride in being part of the present age. The valleys lay treeless, naked. A brush contractor had burned and bulldozed it out to make the lake free of snags. The farmers were gone, and the charm of the two valleys had been lessened to that of a poorly kept city lawn.
Dragoon Creek was so named because a young dragoon soldier died and was buried on its banks long ago. Settlers bound west on the Santa Fe trail out of Westport forded a stream 110 miles out, hence the name of the second creek.
Up at the end of the lake on my father's farm the old stone barn was shoved down. It was more than 100 years old and didn't have a nail in it. It was all stone and mortar, beams and shingles, tied to gether with hand-fashioned wooden pegs. Beside the barn stood a great spreading elm tree; an old man once told me that the prairie tribes used to palaver under it. It was a mighty tree, and it is gone.
THE FINE OLD STONE house where my uncle lived was a pile of rock, and his rambling yard a weed patch. The creek below his house, where I swam on summer days, was filled with charred wood from the brush fires and mud from the churning caterpillars.
Over on the Neill farm the only visible sign of the once well-kept barnyard was a pile of ruble and the entrance to the storm cellar. Glenn Neill was deathly afraid of tornadoes, and he would get his wife and kids out of bed to go to the cellar whenever anything more than a breeze stirred on a summer night.
The farmer did not want it, but his voice was drowned in the chorus. The drama of the passing of the small farmers and the small farm countryside is not always so abrupt, but it is there. The economy has no use for most of the farmers, and they must now man the industries and offices. The land must fall to big capital, big machines, and in this case, to the big fishing hole.
There were other farmers. The Woodards were gone. They were known as good farmers who paid their bills. The Bryson farm will go under water too. My aunt called them Grandma and Grandpa Bryson because of their extreme old age.
THE PEOPLE DOWN-STREAM wanted that dam. They wanted the water for industry and the security of flood control. The water skiers wanted it, and the white collar fisherman who yearned to get out into the good old out-of-doors on his day off wanted it.
As I drove down the country roads, stripped of their protective hedge-rows, I felt the curious embarrassment that one feels when he looks into another man's casket.
As for the farmers who lived in the Dragoon and 110 Mile valleys, some will re-settle on different land. But many will be swept into new roles in the changing economy.
All the sentiment in the world will not bring them back to small farm country, for it cannot fit them in. But I guess that when they are fumbling to put on their water skis, they will remember the days when they got up early to curse the weather and fret at the mud or the grasshoppers. And remember the fierce pride of a man who has his own land.
Tom Coffman
Daily Hansan
111 Flint Hall
University of Kansas student newspaper
UUNiversity 4-3646, newsroom
UUNiversity 4-3198, business office
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
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.
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