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University Daily Kansan Tuesday. Jan. 3, 1961
Commune Capitalism?
December was a bad month for Red China.
The month saw a double setback for the "Peoples Republic of China,"home offices in Peking.
But Chou dejectedly headed home with the understanding that the Cqmunist world henceward would play the game by Moscow's, not Peking's, rules. This meant stressing co-existence with the West rather than using armed might.
Instead he sent his foreign minister, Chou En-Lai, to speak his piece for him.
AND WORSE YET, the Chinese leaders decided that communism, spiced with a little capitalism on the side, might be more palatable.
Chou recently announced that the country was suffering from the effects of the "worst combination of natural disasters in the century." Approximately one-half of the arable land (133 million acres) had been blistered by drought, tattered by storms or chomped bare by grasshoppers this summer.
First, the Red summit meeting in Moscow early in the month when Khrushchev was given a vote of confidence in his ideological difference with Red China's boss, Mao Tse-tung.
The bald one from the Kremlin feels that intrigue, subversion and propaganda can do the same job of conquering the world as Mao's impetuous plan to throw rockets, bombs and hordes of inscrutable nationals at the free-world—and for fewer rubles.
MAO WAS CONSPICUOUS by his absence from the conference, billed as a World Series in communist theory.
Then comes the word that Red China's marvelous plan for gaining industrial and agricultural superiority is somewhat off schedule.
"More than the people's diet is involved. The
As Time Magazine puts it;
But what it amounts to is incentive pay— you do more work, you get more money.
The hard realities of nature had forced Peking's planners to recognize that despite all their emphasis on new steel plants, and the heady dreams of transforming China overnight into a powerful industrial nation, China was still what it had always been—a country whose livelihood depended on agriculture."
So the switch is being made from emphasis on the accomplishments of the industrial worker to the government's heaping kudos on the farm workers.
But just at the time when so much is needed from so many in the communes, it turns out the workers aren't too happy down on the farm and are making AFL-CIO-type noises.
FOR ONE THING, they don't like the way the overseer lead a better life than the common man. It's downright un-communistic.
For another, the party credo of "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs" is not working out as idealistically supposed. Too much hoe-leaining and coffee-breaking apparently, for the government now is enforcing "the underlying principle of more income for more work."
In other words—Capitalism.
"No, no," cries the Finance Vice-Minister Chin Ming, it's only demonstrating "creative socialist distribution."
We sadly note the retrogression of the Peoples Republic in adopting the practices of the decadent, capitalist West.
Who knows, before long we might see Jimmy Hoffa scurrying off to the Orient to battle for higher wages, shorter hours and collective bargaining for the collectivists of the East.
Frank Morgan
By Calder M. Pickett Acting Dean, School of Journalism
A PICTORIAL HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN THEATRE, 100 YEARS, 1860-1960. by Daniel Blum. Chilton. $11.50.
Here is an ideal birthday gift for the person who, though he has seldom left the Midwest, is theatre-struck. Daniel Blum compiled thousands of photographs for a volume a few years ago, and now he has added pictures and data for 1880-1900 and 1956-1960.
It is not a scholarly work. One can gain some insight into theatrical history and into acting styles and costumes, but there is little evaluation by Blum. One has to find for himself the sense of any particular era—the melodramatic flamboyance of the late 19th century, the experimentalism of the 1920s or crusading spirit of the 1930s, the daring adventures in subject matter of the 1950s.
BUT THE FUN OF this volume lies in the fact that one can turn to any page and see names and faces and titles that bring memories, even to those of us who have not seen the persons involved. The Booth family belongs to all of us, and so do Adah Menken and Joseph Jefferson and the Drews and Barrymores and Helen Hayes and Lillian Russell.
Here is the lovely young Ethel Barrymore, the ingeneue in "Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines." Here is the 8-year-old Helen Hayes, fat and round-faced, appearing in "Old Dutch." Here is a jaunty juvenile named Jimmy Durante. Bernardt, Duse and Lily Langtry are in these pages. So are George Arliss, James O'Neill, George M. Cohan and Otis Skinner.
There is a strikingly beautiful Tallulah Bankhead, appearing in a 1918 play. And the pages unfold: Maurice Evans, Paul Muni, Katharine Cornell and Katharine Hepburn, Ina Claire, Raymond Massey, Jessica Tandy, Marlon Brando, Ezio Pinza, Geraldine Page.
SHAKESPEARE, SHAW, Isben, O'Neill, Kaufman and Hart, Frank Bacon, David Belasco. "Lightnin'," "Abie's Irish Rose," "South Pacific," "Rip Van Winkle," "Anna Christie," "Smilin' Through," "The Guardsman," "The Student Prince," "What Every Woman Knows," "Dead End," "Arsenic and Old Lace," "My Fair Lady," "Harvey" and "The Teahouse of the August Moon."
But why list them? The book does the job much better. Here is a way to go dreaming in the world of make-believe.
Editor:
In order to clear up the misunderstanding which has arisen about my position on athletics, about "pedestals," "ivory towers," etc., let me make my position completely unambiguous.
A Clarification
My first letter criticizing Chancellor Wescoe was written for one reason: to oppose the use of class time for the honoring of athletic events. As I stated in that first letter, I am not advocating the abolishment of athletics from university life, but wish to see that athletics do not take priority over academic matters. Two or three years ago KU took second place in the NCAA finals; KU was second in the nation, not merely first in the Big Eight. Did Chancellor Murphy call a basketball convocation, or allow the honoring of this event to take class time? No, of course not. We who are very much interested in the academic quality of the University of Kansas were, of course, very sorry to see Murphy leave. But we are
more disturbed over the fact that the policies of Wescoe may lead to the lowering of the academic quality of KU.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
By desiring the subordination of sports to intellect, I do not mean that we should become educated in only a "narrow, technical sense." Indeed, I feel that participation in athletics is a part of a liberal education. To be a spectator, however, has little to do with education, properly speaking, but is a part of the man desiring certain forms of entertainment. I am not opposed to football games, but, since I do not consider the spectator to be receiving an education, I feel that the honoring of football teams is something which should never take class time.
REMEMBER I SAID THE TEST WOULD BE OVER CLASS DISCUSSIONS!
The case against athletic scholarships is simply that college athletes are being paid to entertain the public. This is what professional athletics are for. I would prefer that the university support a professional team rather than pretend that athletes are here to receive a liberal education. Instead, they are being paid to receive a specialized training in noneducational public entertainment. It is the hypocrisy of the matter which is in question here. I feel that it is definitely necessary for there to be good state universities within easy reach of students who have grown up in the Midwest and who cannot af-
The University of Kansas is now among these good universities. And let us hope that KU will continue to move upward as it did under Murphy. This cannot be accomplished by football convocations.
John L. Hodge Kansas City senior
Washington observers are focusing on a new crisis in government. President-elect Kennedy is almost out of relatives.
Short Ones
From the Magazine Rack
Business in Academe
"But the man thing is that there isn't enough money; life is pinched and mean (except for the new expense-account aristocracy who get the big grants). A dean of a college in the Northeast told me that a good deal of his time is spent writing character references to finance companies. Thus a promotion, let us say, to associate professor is likely to be a more desperate matter than a hitch up the corporate ladder. A $400 raise to a teacher with a second or third child on the way can be a necessity for survival."
"As a result, academic institutions are not gentle civilized retreats, high, high above the dark jungle of business. Alas, at precisely the time that business has become somewhat less feral, academia now dances to the beat of the tom-tom. It has come to resemble the world outside when the world outside no longer resembles what it was. The competitiveness is exacerbated by the new marginal groups now in academic life. Universities were once dominated by Anglo-Saxon oligarchs, often with independent incomes (the professor's favorite daydream). Today, second- and third-generation immigrant groups of all nationalities, in America's new status revolution, have found their way into academic life, are pouring their energies into it, and threshing about for position. This makes for a much needed vitality but also for sharp elbows and knees when the in-fighting gets rough."
(Excerpted from "American Colleges," by David Boroff in the April, 1960, Harper's Magazine.)
UNIT REIT
Dailu Transan
University of Kansas student newspaper
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
Ray Miller ... Managing Editor
Carol Heller, Jane Boyd, Priscilla Burton and Carrie Edwards, Assistant
Managing Editors; Pat Sheley and Suzanne Shaw, City Editors; John
Macdonald, Sports Editor; Peggy Kallos and Donna Engle, Society
Editors.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
John Peterson and Bill Blundell ... Co-Editorial Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Mark Dull ... Business Manager