SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1942
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
PAGE THREE
The KANSAN Comments...
Defense Skyrockets Student Living Costs
The influx of thousands of workers to help construct the Sunflower ordnance plant at Eudora presents University students this fall with a new and serious problem—the threat of rising costs and cramped living facilities.
Lush wages paid to the defense workers have caused a perceptible increase in both room and board rates. Insufficient living quarters and lack of material to build more housing accommodations have brought laborers and students into direct competition for rooms.
Because of an increased demand upon the restaurants and grocery stores, the cost of food has risen. Students also find a marked rise in the price of clothing. The skyrocketing of expenses for the necessities of existence will be acutely felt by students.
As more and more defense workers pour in to operate the ordnance plant once it is completed, living costs will increase. Because of the unusually high wages the defense workers receive, students, most of whom will have to live on a fixed budget, find themselves at a disadvantage in bidding against labor.
Some students may be forced to leave school because of this inflation; others may find it necessary to work part time on a reduced class schedule in order to meet the sharply rising living costs.
President Roosevelt has proposed anti-inflation and profit and price ceilings to curb inflation. Now is a good time to adopt a stringent set of such proposals, and Lawrence is a good place to impose them.
Japan's To Jo
Ernest O. Hauser was right when he said, in a article in Life Magazine, that the United States reading public should know more about men who not only run Japan's share of the Axis war effort but can be considered chiefly responsible for its existence. That man is Premier, War Minister, Home Minister, Foreign Minister, and General Hideki Tojo.
Before the war, Hauser explained, Tojo was practically unheard of in the United States. Even today, some persons have not heard of him and many do not realize his importance in shaping Japan's strategy. If Pearl Harbor was not his idea, he certainly gets credit for making the plan an actuality.
Hauser said that Tojo's position in Japan is comparable to that of Hitler's in Germany. As War Minister and Premier, he is able to formulate national policies with no interference by his cabinet colleagues. Tojo, as Home Minister is ahead of the secret police. As Premier, he co-ordinates national policies and national defense. He recently succeeded Tojo, who helped arrange the Russo-Jap amity agreement, as Foriegn Minister.
Less than two months after Tojo became Premier, he was able to materialize a plan which he had been advocating for years—that of bringing the entire Asiatic order to a conclusion by means of an all-out war. Tojo came from a family of the fighting aristocracy that had oppressed the nation for the last thousand years, but his contact in childhood with poverty-stricken people gave him the desire to improve Japan's economic and social status. To Tojo, war was the only obvious method to use for improvement for his country.
After he was graduated from Tokyo's Imperial Military Academy as a sub-leutenant, Tojo served a short term as military attach in
Germany. Later, he was commander of the First Infantry regiment in Tokyo. In 1937, Tojo began his work as commander of the national secret police and served as chief of the army's police in Manchuria. He was appointed War Minister in 1940.
Tojo hates slow moving democracy, favors totalitarianism, is an active member of a Fascist organization. He has the ability of an efficient administrator as well as the ability of a crack soldier. With Hitler occupied in Russia and with the decreasing influence of Mussolini, Premier Tojo now qualifies as the most competent and dangerous enemy to the United Nations.
Stymie in St. Albans
Downhearted golfers, confronted by a shortage of equipment and transportation to and from the links, may console themselves with the difficulties of a group of fellow-sportsmen in St. Albans, New York. Here a band of the niblick clique were confronted at mid-course by a body of workmen, tearing up the sod for a hurry-up Navy project.
Unfortunately, the newspaper account of the incident does not say precisely what happened at the momentous meeting. Possibly the golfers were raven souls who picked up their balls and retreated dejectedly to the locker room without a struggle. We like to think, though, that they were faithful to a clan, true representatives of those hardy souls who battle through hail and high water to finish the eighteenth.
We like to think that these sportsmen scorned the mild hazards imposed by the presence of bulldozers and dump trucks—that they teed off and played through in spite of the clamor of gasoline motors and straw bosses—that they hooked and sliced their way relentlessly over what was left of their once-beloved turf—that they pounded the pellet home to the clubhouse as of old.
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Student Paper of THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
Publisher ... John Conard
EDITORIAL STAFF
Editor-in-chief ... Alan B. Houghton
Editorial Associates ... Maurice Barker, Mary
Eleanor Fyv, Bob Cole-
man, J. Donald Keown
NEWS STAFF
Managing Editor ... Bill Feeney
Campus Editors ... Virginia Tieman, Dean Sims,
              Dale Robinson, Bob Coleman
Sports Editor ... J. Donald Keown
Society Editor ... Barbara Batchelor
News Editor ... Joy Miller
Sunday Editor ... Ralph Coldren
Exchange Editor ... Eleanor Fry
BUSINESS STAFF
Business Manager ... Oliver Hughes
Advertising Manager ... John Pope
Advertising Assistant ... Charles Taylor, Jr.
OFFICIAL BULLETIN
UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
Vol. 40 Sunday, September 20, 1942 No. 2
Notices due at News Bureau, 8 Journalism, at
10 a.m. on day of publication during the week,
and at 11 a.m. on Saturday for Sunday issue.
STUDENTS wishing to enroll in Reading for Honors in English may consult Miss Burnham in 24 Fraser Hall between 9 and 12 or between 2 and 4 on Friday and Saturday, the days of enrollment. Please read the relevant statement in the University Catalog, and if feasible bring transcript.J. M. Burnham, for the Committee.
Carlos Beardmore, Sig Ep pledge from Mankado, learns fast—anyway so say the actives who pledged him. Immediately following rush week, young Beardmore came up with a date. He questioned an active:
"Say, do you think it'd look ok. for me to walk down the campus with my date on one arm and my steak-fry blanket on the other?"
(This young fellow undoubtedly has gone to college somewhere before.)
Antonio Lulli, the Ferruvian exchange student at the Phi Psi house, is having name difficulties—gs might naturally be expected. Since his name was rather different from the others and as other fellows had nick-names, he consented to being called "To To" (pronounced "Toe Toe").
He sent his laundry out and all his clothes came back marked "Jo Jo." When his trunk arrived, they were addressed to "Po Po."
When his trunks arrived they were addressed to "Po Po." So now he's asking that everyone start calling him by the good, simple name of Antonio again.
It's usgusting
To the profession
Of all good journalists
For a guy like me
To write stuff like this
Just to fill up space
On the editorial page.
Joy Miller, in charge of the K-book desk in the registration line complains that she's either going to have to change her sales speech of:
"Will you have a K-book?" or else hire some fast track men to pursue the new students who pick up a book and say:
"Yeah, thanks a lot," and walk away, never thinking of paying Joy the two-bits.
War Activities Change Gay Ole College Town
by Forest Hashburger
Then I noticed picket fences of metal stanchions lining the curbing of the business district, supporting—of all things—parking meters. More of the big-city influence. It might have been a street in Kansas City, except for landmarks in the background.
A picket pacing back and forth in front of edown town restaurant, bearing a sign proclaiming it unfair to organized labor, was the first thing which caught my eye as the taxi drove toward the Hill. Big-city labor problems superimposed on the small-town atmosphere of Lawrence. The "black hand" of war had tightened its grasp on our country, was reaching into its innermost depths.
When I left Lawrence last spring, it was still a peaceful little community on the Kaw, home of the University of Kansas. Although during the summer I heard it was changing due to the construction of a munitions plant nearby, Iwas hardly prepared for the extent of those changes, the newness; it almost seemed as if I had gotton off
The real touch of war on the University was apparent when I first lit atop Mt. Oread. Something new had been added. Where ROTC uniforms had dominated, navy whites, blues and dungarees had suddenly taken the stage. Frank Strong Hall was no more merely the administration building. It was now the home of 500 sailors, learning the mysteries of below-decks mechanical functions.
Another reminder of the serious state of affairs was the law barn. The steps of Green hall seemed haunted by the ghosts of former gatherings of would-be lawyers, embarassing sweet young co-eds
Class rooms once filled with gay, carefree so-called students preparing for civilian life had been taken over by the navy to train men to keep our fighting vessels in trim for the grim business of destroving the might of the Axis.
with their whistling and heckling as they passed by.
Unfortunately, laws are swept aside by war, and men are needed as soldiers, rather than as barristers. How many of the girls, who used to hate (?) having to walk by Green hall, would welcome the cheerful razzing of the lawmen in exchange for the strange silence? ...
These changes may not be so apparent to new students, but we upperclassmen will notice them. Only unusual times could create rooming shortages and make it difficult to find students for jobs.
Maybe someday things will return to normal and the University will again have a superfluity of men, football for pleasure instead of to toughen up men for the armed forces, and courses in physical conditioning will be optional.
Capt. George Smith To Instruct R.O.T.C.
George Baxter Smith, former dean of the School of Education, was recently ordered to active duty as an instructor in the Reserve Officer's Training Corps at the University.
Smith, who was also director of the summer session, received his orders August 22, the day after the summer session closed. He entered the service as a captain. Smith received his original commission from the University of Minnesota in 1929 and has been a reserve officer since. He will be stationed have permanently.
Cuba has one of the oldest universities in the Americas, founded in 1723.