University Daily Kansan
Page 2
Tuesday, April 17, 1956.
Let's All Vote
by Dick Bibler
At this time each year, elections roll around for class officers and All Student Council positions. Eager students flood the campus with posters, fill the Daily Kansan with advertisements, and campaign furiously. Yet what good are campaigns and elections if only half the students on the campus vote? Why bother to have class officers and an All Student Council if they represent only 50 per cent of the campus?
Each time the ASC makes an important decision, some people protest and refuse to abide by it. Yet the people who get sore are usually the same people who were too lazy or "too busy" to take 15 minutes to vote for their candidates.
Every student enrolled in this University has an obligation to vote in the elections. No student should feel his vote is unimportant, because the voter is just as important as the person he votes for. Besides, in an election where so few votes can mean the difference between victory and defeat, every vote is needed.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
So when the polls open Wednesday morning, plan to leave a few minutes earlier for class or take a few minutes of your spare time during the day so you can vote. It takes such a short time, and the outcome is so important. Not only does a person have an obligation to vote, but he is being unfair to the rest of the student body if he doesn't.
Bob Riley
"YOU HAVE USED TH' FIRST 10 MINUTES - 40 TO GO!"
AReplyToGeorge
Editor:
This is an open letter to George Sheldon, president of the All Student Council.
All right George, what is wrong with the University Daily Kansan? Not with the editorial page, which is more or less autonomous, but with the paper as a whole. Start writing those volumes. I'm interested. But be specific please—and don't bother to tell us about the errors and mistakes in judgment. We're only too well aware of them. We have 8,500 readers to spot them for us—and a journalism faculty member with the disposition of a wounded water buffalo to gore us about them.
John McMillion
Coffeyville senior
Managing editor
University Daily Kansan
We thought it was dangerous walking to class during the winter when the streets were covered with ice, but it's not nearly so bad as dodging the miraculous gushers of water which always seem to be turned on suddenly while classes are changing.
Maybe glorified lawn-sprinklers arose out of jealousy when the University couldn't afford to build its own fountain.
What this country needs is fewer people telling us what this country needs.
50th Anniversary Of Great 'Frisco Fire
Fifty years ago today, the city of San Francisco was shaken by a terrific earthquake. The tremor of the earth, though quite severe, lasted only a little over a minute, but it set off a chain of fire and destruction which claimed between 450 and 490 lives and left damages too fantastic to estimate.
At that time, San Francisco was the third-ranking commercial city in the United States, and was the major sea-going point in ocean trade with the far East.
And there were other facets to the fame of this lusty coastal city. The Barbary Coast, a three-block section located near the waterfront, had an international reputation, and was a stopping-off place for all sailors spending any time in San Francisco. As has been the case in many great disasters, the day began inconspicuously, giving no hint of the traceday it was to bring.
Life As Usual
The night before, San Francisco's upper class had heard Enrico Caruso sing the part of Don Jose in the Metropolitan Opera Company's presentation of "Carmen."
As usual, the night life society had given up and gone home at 3 a.m. customary closing time of most of the vendors. By 5 a.m. the city was asleep.
At 5:12 a.m., the first shock hit the city. Seismograph recordings show the quaking sharpened in intensity for about 10 seconds, and then ceased completely for about 10 seconds. Then came a second shock, equal to the first, and lasting for about 15 seconds. Then the great quake slowly subsided into shuddering aftertremors that occurred about once each hour for the next day.
But in the space of a little more than a minute, the damage had been done. Hit hardest by the shocks were the sandy artificial lands reclaimed from Yerba Buena Cove, and from the swamps and tidefalls in the South of Market and Mission districts. There, in tumble-down elements, lived the working class of the city, inhabited by Scotch, Swede, and Pole, but including nearly every other race.
Some Still Stand
In the better-class residential districts, safely located upon hills, the houses were still standing. The quake had been felt, and the people were alarmed, but damage was not great.
Sleepy citizens compared this quake with the tremors of earlier years, and commented on the apparent safety of the area. But most of these citizens, roused from their alarming family circumstances, noticed the flames already booming high into the air above the South of Market district.
Fire companies hastily harnessed horses and rushed to the area, but they were helpless. The
city was doomed, although most people did not realize it.
The quake, in addition to the destruction of property above the surface of the earth, had done even more consequential internal damage
Water Supply Wrecked
For as the interior of the earth ripped and tore and twisted, the pressures from deep within had broken all of the city's water mains.
There was almost no water available to fight the conflagration which was eventually to consume almost all of the city. Telephone and telephone cables also were broken, so that communication was at a standstill.
But San Francisco did not give in without a fight. Mayor Eugene B. Schmitz, often accused of unfitness in office, summoned the courage men often down in times of stress and laid down the law.
Demolition experts were summoned from the Army, and dynamite and powder were obtained from the warehouses along the waterfront. Plans were made to build a barricade along the path of the fire. Sales of alcohol were prohibited. Martial law was established.
But the fire burned on. By Wednesday afternoon, half of the heart of the city was destroyed or in flames.
Weather Won't Help
By Wednesday night, the remainder of the heart of the city had been dynamited, but the flames roared on. It became apparent that only a miracle would happen if I was going to consume the city, and that miracle was not forthcoming.
The weather, the only hope, failed to respond. The air was dead calm, and the heat of the flames brought terrific suction as it rose in the air. This suction served to spread the flames even faster.
But the people remained calm. Wednesday night, while the city was being destroyed all about them, the residents of San Francisco remained orderly and courteous. There were no mobs, no shouting, no panic or hysteria.
But most of the efforts were to no avail. San Francisco is a city of hills, and as the fugitives from fire sought escape, most abandoned their treasures rather than struggle to get them up the tortuous slopes. The smarter ones buried the valuable belongings, and those who escaped the flames themselves returned to claim their possessions.
The homeless ones fled before the flames. They carried or dragged trunks, pulled wagons, carried bundles—every conceivable method in an attempt to save a few precious items from the onrushing flames.
The Homeless Flee
The fire continued to burn through the night, and the destruction spread throughout the
city. There was no water. There was nothing that could be done. The only sound was the roaring of the flames.
Morning finally came to the doomed city, although the sun could not be seen through the ceiling of smoke which blanketed the city.
By this time, assistance from nearby cities had begun to arrive, but it was hopeless. The fire burned on. The flames raged all day Thursday and all Thursday night, and all day Friday.
Under Control Friday
Friday night the flames finally were brought under control by a combination of dynamitizing and some gallant work by the tired firefighters. It was their last stand. Had this supreme effort failed, the few remaining houses in the city would have fallen before the flames.
As the sun rose Saturday, a weary, battered San Francisco surveyed the ruins of a once-great city. Four-fifths of the town was destroyed. Over 450 were dead, and 1,500 more were injured. More than 225,000 more were left homeless. Damage in terms of dollars was incomprehensible.
There had been many heroes in this great tragedy, but none more valiant than the 40 men who remained inside the United States Mint, with $220 million in its vaults. These 40 men kept the fire burning hold of the mint while the city was destroyed all around it.
Still the people were not dismayed. Rebuilding began almost at once, and continued until the city was recreated. San Francisco, a great city and a great fighter, had taken the Sunday punch, but it was not quitting. The fight would go on until once more the city of the Golden Gate could take its place among the great cities of the United States, in spite of the worst, most complete disaster in the history of the country.
When the flames were finally halted, the damages were incomprehensible. Almost nothing was left of the city, which four days earlier had been the pride of California.
Daily Hansan
-Dick Walt
University of Kansas student newspaper
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Brown Street, New York, NY. Mail service: United Press. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $4.50 a year. Published by Lawrence University, every afternoon during university hours. Saturday and Sundays, University holidays, and examination periods. Entered as second-class matter Sept. 17, 1910, at March 3, 1879.
American Farmer Has Lost Political Power
By UNITED PRESS
The American farm and the American farmer are basic in the nation's economy and no one denies that. But the American farmer is not now the political power house he used to be in a presidential election.
There aren't enough of him. The commerce department says there were in 1920 about 10,160,000 persons 14 years old and over engaged in farm work in the United States.
The number had dropped to about 6,840,000 in 1950. The farmers in 1930 represented 21 per cent of the gainfully occupied national labor force. In 1950 farmers made up only 11.6 per cent of that force.
Latest commerce department figures are for 1954 when 6.5 million persons 14 or over were working on farms. The number of Americans engaged in agriculture has steadily diminished since the government began to keep tabs more than 100 years ago.
There are somewhat more than three times as many farm workers now than in 1820, but population has doubled and redoubled many times over. The civilian labor force alone was estimated in 1954 to be nearly 64.5 million. Farmers represented about 10 per cent of it.
Ten per cent of the working population is a sound and lusty minority but there are other minority groups which far out-number American farmers.
Membership of the newly merged American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations, for example, is estimated in the neighborhood of 16 million. The Southern Baptist convention of the U.S. numbers nearly 8 million. The Methodist Church counts somewhat more than that. The Roman Catholic Church has nearly 31.5 million members. Jewish congregations trail the farmers with an estimated membership of 5 million.
All of these are pressure groups or potential pressure groups. Baptists and Methodists applied much of the pressure which obtained the 18th amendment to the Constitution and the experiment of national prohibition.
Reduced numbers have weakened agriculture's political punch but it can be a mighty blow under the right conditions. In many congressional districts it is absolutely controlling. It can be a presidential factor, too.
Compared to some of the others, the American farmer is a small minority, widely scattered but with large areas in which he has no representation at all. These minus areas are in the large, consuming cities and industrial areas.
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