Page 4 University Daily Kansan Tuesday, Sept. 20, 1960
Coeds Pack Peas In Pacific Province
Peter Piper, the lad who picked a peck of you know what, had a soft job. He didn't have to pack them.
This is the report of four women who last summer packed peas in Oregon and who are now replacing pea packages with KU textbooks. These pen-packing Kansans are Diane Rinker, WaKeeney; Jamice Whelchel, Salina, juniors; Nancy Rhinehart, Topeka, and Carrie Edwards, Lawrence, seniors.
These women punched buttons with their knees for approximately 17 nights, casing frozen pea packages for a Weston, Ore., packing plant.
THEIR KNEE-PUSHING brought 10-ounce packages of peas within their reach on rollers. The pea-packers then thrust the boxes six at a time into larger cases. They slid each filled carton of 24 packages onto a moving conveyor belt headed for sealing and shipping operations.
The KU women were accompanied by Gwen Jeffries, a WaKeeney senior at Ft. Hays State College. The five women figured they worked a combined total of 74 nights for their summer's labor in the Northwest. They trudged to work at 7 p.m., ate lunch on their midnight break and punched out at 7 a.m.
Miss Rinker counted some fourteen cents in her purse on June 12. In view of this and similar distress signals from the other women's purses, the five used their knees for another type of work — picking strawberries. Three hours of picking strawberries brought $11 to the Kansens. They suffered with aching back muscles as well as aching knees for days following their berry-picking
The women also spent hours as box-makers at the cannery. They stepped on a pedal to get correctly-measured, moist tape to seal the bottoms of 50-pound boxes of peas
iceberg belts. Icy peas dropped on moving rotary belts were sometimes four inches deep as they passed beside the college-age inspectors. The KU women used rubber gloves and pieces of cardboard as frost-bite precautions as they uncovered and inspected the peas on the cold belt. They pitched out any pods coming over the line.
They said they hated the 40 degree temperature on the iceberg belt. This resulted from nearby freezers being opened constantly and the draft from the machines dropping peas onto the belts.
Miss Jeffries said she was amazed at the thousands of pods and peas thrown out at the cannery daily. She said she would pitch pods from the iceberg belts onto the floor where college men would wash them down drains. Other peas sometimes fell off the belts or the other machines
She said it was not unusual to step off the ramp to the iceberg belts and plunge ankle-deep into peas and pods.
Despite the large number of rejects, better than 37 million pounds of peas were to have been packaged this summer at the Weston plant, Miss Jeffries said.
THE KU PEA-PACKERS were laid off July 29 before the pea season was completed. Only older employees with seniority worked through the slowed-up processing operations near the end of the season.
At least one KU student group has packed peas in Oregon every summer during the last three years.
V for Vern
THEY REPORTEDLY dreaded A pinch of common sense and a the work they did on the frozen pea handful of rhetoric are America's picktables, often referred to as the party platform—Denis Hogan
PITTSBURGH—(UP)—Vern Law of the Pirates has four sons all of whose first names begin with "V." The boys names are Veldon, Veryl, Vance and Vaughan.
WICHTTA, Kan. — (UPI) — The Wichita Eagle Publishing Company assumed publication of the Wichita Beacon at noon today.
Wichita Eagle Absorbs Rival
The action followed purchase by the Eagle of all the stock of the Wichita Beacon newspaper corporation from members of the Levand families.
Announcement of the Beacon Purchase was made by Marcellus M. Murdock, publisher and editorial director of the Eagle and President of the Wichita Eagle Publishing Company.
Editions of the Beacon will be continued until essential details of a combined operation can be completed.
Publication facilities of the Eagle will be used for a period. Later, the Beacon building, with improvements and enlargements, may be occupied.
Under the combined operation, Wichita will have a single evening and a single morning newspaper with the Sunday Eagle combined with the Sunday Beacon as Wichita's Sunday newspaper.
KSU Opens New Journalism Wing
MANHATTAN —(UPI)—An open house Saturday will give Kansas newspaper editors their first opportunity to inspect the new journalism facilities at Kansas State University.
Ralph Lashbrook, head of the department, said tours of the new building are planned beginning at 9:45 am. Visiting editors will be guests of the K-State Collegian at a noon luncheon and guests at the K-State-University of Kansas football game Saturday afternoon.
There will be a brief formal program starting at 10:15 a.m., consisting of a "wrangle session" to be presided over by George Clasen, Florence, president of the Kansas Press Association, and an address by Richard M. Seaton, publisher of the Coffeville Journal, on "Newspaperman Tourist in Russia."
Harriman Urges US Aid to Africa
WASHINGTON — (UPI)— Averil Harriman called today for greater U.S. aid and friendship to independent countries in Africa to keep them, from turning to Communist nations for help.
Harriman said that during a three-week visit to eight African nations he found a fear that "out of Moscow and Peking would come a new form of colonialism."
He said "if they get a reasonable helping hand from the west" they will not be disposed to form a closer relationship with the Soviet Union and Communist China.
Harriman, a former New York Governor and Ambassador to the Soviet Union, is one of the key foreign policy advisers to Sen. John F. Kennedy, Democratic presidential candidate. He made the trip to Africa at Kennedy's request.
Harriman said the trip was nonpolitical. He said he refrained from criticizing the Eisenhower administration while he was abroad.
He visited the Republic of Sengel, Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, the Congo Republic (the former French Congo) and the Republic of the Congo (formerly the Belgian Congo).
Talks with high government officials and diplomats have convinced
New Hours For Library
Watson Library and the departmental libraries, including the engineering, law, Lindley and science libraries, will be open for six additional hours each week, said John Slinka, acting assistant director of Watson Library.
The libraries will be open until 11 p.m. from Sunday through Friday. This schedule became effective yesterday.
The additional hours, Mr. Glinka said, were due to the change in closing hours.
him that, except for Guinea and Ghana, "their instinct is to be with the West."
Guinea and Ghana, Harriman said, are pursuing what Guinea President Sekou Toure calls "positive neutrality." Harriman said in Toure's case this means "leaning to the East" but with sufficient western ties to be able to avoid Communist domination.
He said President Nkrumah of Ghana leans more to the West but "he wants to get aid both wavs."
Harriman said the United States should provide teachers and other educational assistance, the form of aid African leaders told him they most want. This country should also assist with technical help in agriculture and irrigation and capital for industry to facilitate urbanization, he added.
In the Congo, Harriman said, "the Soviet Union has been shrewdly at work undercutting the United Nations with objective of attaining domination. To achieve this Lumumba, (Patrice, disputed Premier) has been used as its tool and given direct aid outside United Nations channels."
Locked Wheels Cause Accident
Two cars were damaged in an auto accident last night on Engel Road, near Templin Hall. Stanley Haywood, Wichita freshman, told police his wheels locked causing him to hit a car which was parked at the curb.
Haywood's hit one owned by Keno Henderson, Lakin freshman. Major damage was done to the left front fender and grills of both cars.
Haywood was taken to Watkins Hospital for observation and was put under sedation for shock. He was dismissed this morning.
Lord! I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing—Jonathan Swift.
Available at the Kansan Business Office, Room 111, Flint Hall, Phone VI 3-2700, Ext. 376