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University Daily Kansan
Monday, Feb. 15, 1965
Capital Punishment
Waiting on death row at Lansing are five men; Richard Eugene Hickok and Perry Edward Smith, convicted for the 1959 slaying of a Western Kansas farm family; James Douglas Latham and George Ronald York, convicted of killing a Wallace County railroad man in 1961 and the confessed murderers of six other persons; and Vernon Gee, convicted of killing a Kansas City policeman.
While these men wait, the Kansas legislature may debate a bill designed to abolish the death penalty in Kansas. Similar bills were introduced at the last session of the legislature but were never put to a vote in either house.
These men are waiting to hang, the same fate to which 16 men have been sentenced by the state of Kansas. All previous hangings have been for the crime of murder.
AT THE PRESENT TIME, only nine states have abolished capital punishment. The first state to do so was Michigan in 1847. Kansas, at one time was among those states with no death penalty. In 1907 the death penalty was abolished and was kept off the law books until 1935 when a nation-wide crime wave convinced legislators that the death penalty should be restored.
In 1944, the first hanging under the restored law took place after the resignation of the warden of Kansas State Penitentiary because of his opposition to capital punishment.
"I do not wish to be a participant when the
state turns to the barbarous rite of killing"
warden Milton F. Amrine said as he left office.
As men have been executed by the state, the controversy has raged over capital punishment. The very few states that have abolished the death penalty indicates the general feeling that the ultimate crime deserves the ultimate punishment.
THIS PREVAILING SENTIMENT has resulted in a heavy burden being placed on the governor of the state, for an 1872 law providing for the governor to issue and sign death warrants, also read: "No governor shall be compelled to issue any order for the execution of any convict." Life or death thus became a prerogative of the governor. One governor declared that rather than sign a death warrant, he would resign. But others have refused clemency, and in the last 21 years, 11 men have hanged.
Capital punishment, in theory, is viewed as a threat to discourage a person from committing the ultimate crime of murder. But there seems to be no indisputable evidence that the death penalty serves the purpose it was intended for. And there is also the question of whether or not "killing" is moral when it is committed in the name of the state.
With the insights provided by the behavioral sciences, it would seem that capital punishment is old-fashioned and out-moded. The Kansas legislature would be taking a step forward if it would abolish the death penalty.
Political Ball Always Roll On
Elephants—19, Donkeys—16.
That's the score as of Nov. 3 for the political parties in the U.S.'s most spectacular baseball game.
Of course, what makes the game so exciting is that it is played only once every four years on a large scale. That way the suspense builds up, you know.
THE UNIFORMS for the teams change sometimes. For instance, the Republicans (or the Elephants, as they are affectionately known) are wearing black and blue suits this time. That's their "on the road" uniform. The Democrats, or the Donkeys, are in the gold and white of the "home" team.
The collective umpire is sometimes hostile, but then he's also quite congenial, at times. For instance, President Johnson, who's at the plate for the next four years, has a very cooperative umpire, who agrees with almost all the plays he's making right now. On the other hand, Kennedy had a little trouble with his umpire, although their ideological belief of how the game should be played was relatively the same. They seemed to disagree on semantics. Most batters, if they're smart, wine and dine the umpire after each game.
The fans differ, too. Some of them throw beer cans when they see a suspected mistake in the rules of the game, like Kennedy getting booed when he tried to steal a base in the Cuban mess. But there are others who think the batter can do no wrong. They are the ones who get him to autograph their programs after each run. Come to think of it, there aren't very many impartial spectators.
Of course, there are different kinds of games. Sometimes the batter will slug the ball to the stands. To thrill the fans, you know. Sense of participation and all that. But then other times, he slams to the outfield, barely missing the outfielder if he's a good batter.
OF COURSE, THE PLAYERS "out in left field" usually object to such nasty antics on the part of that miserable blankety blank at bat. And if they object strenuously enough, they get to go to bat for awhile, while the other players get a turn out in the field. A very fair game, as you can see.
There are vast differences between these two teams. The major one is that the ones at bat are the "good guys" and the ones in the field are "bad guys." That's what the home towns think, anyway.
The Elephants are large and fat and are usually equated with business men. When the Donkeys are at bat, the Elephants complain about the money being spent for uniforms, equipment and publicity. When the Elephants are up, the Donkeys complain about the same thing. It's confusing. I must admit.
According to popular legend, the Donkeys play a fast game, innovating all sorts of new plays, like the base steal that FDR played during the depression. That dazzled the fans, even some of the hostile ones, and he got to
go back to bat four times. Of course, the Elephants objected to the umpire. The umpire decided in favor of the "out" team, which is unusual, according to all the fans. The batter got upset and tried to put in his own umpire. But that didn't work. It didn't go along with the rules of the game.
WHEN THE ELEPHANTS are at bat, they move a little more slowly, because of their size, I suppose. They take more "time outs" than the other team and don't invent quite as many new plays.
The shirt-sleeved workers usually root for the Donkeys. They're wearing blue collars this year, according to the fashion experts. The large, balding executives, throwing champagne bottles rather than beer cans, root for the Elephants. They shout as loud as the workers, though.
According to reports, you can find Donkey fans (when not at the game) in small shops, behind bars and other assorted low-paying jobs. No one can ascertain whether the Elephants or the Donkeys claim this. The Republicans inevitably work in the big offices downtown, you know, the ones with the carpeted floors.
On Sunday morning, before the afternoon game, the Elephant fans go to Protestant churches and the Donkey fans go to the Catholic church down the street.
IT'S REALLY KIND of difficult for an impartial observer of the political baseball game to understand its complexities. You see, everyone gets so excited about the game.
Dailij Ifansan
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Things are a little easier at the end of the season. That's the time when the players are traded and we choose a new batter. The differences are very clear. One of the sides is good and the other is bad. That seems simple enough. I found something else out, though. It all depends on who you're talking to.
- Leta Roth
"We Seem To Have That Paper Tiger In Our Ta..."
BOOK REVIEWS
The great classic by a Kansas editor finally made it into paperback. And it's accompanied by a discerning though overstated afterword by that American Studies type, John William Ward. The time nears for placing "The Story of a Country Town" in its true historical and literary context.
THE STORY OF A COUNTRY TOWN, by E. W. Howe (Signet Classics, 75 cents).
The critics have been telling us since Howe, the editor of the Atchison Globe, laboriously composed the book in the early 1880s by working on it late at night, that it is a searing indictment of small town values. It's drab, true, and the picture is not very pretty, but Howe is doing more than lashing at the small town. He's hitting pretty hard at the baseness of a good many people, and his newspaper editors and later novels reveal that he was as ready to attack the myths of the city as the myths of the "garden in America," to use the words of Ward.
His story is autobiographical—life in the Missouri countryside in mid-19th century and then in the village itself (Bethany, by the way). Life in the home of a circuit riding father who also was town printer and rabid abolitionist. And life with mother, too, especially with mother after father (as in real life) shoved off with a local lady.
Later readers wonder how the author of "The Story of a Country Town" could have become the great apologist for business and small town values. Relax. Howe chose the small town—keep that in mind—for his lifelong home, and he was as effusive as any chamber of commerce writer in pumping out propaganda concerning life in "droughty Kansas." The critics should read the man's editorials before they assume, as they have done for several generations now, that this man was merely an early-day Sinclair Lewis.-CMP
* * *
It's quite a stretch from Theodore Dreiser, whose last good book appeared in the mid-twenties, to the writers of the sixties—Bellow, Styron and Algren. But Maxwell Geismar manages it. There is no unifying theme here, despite the pretentious sub-title, for Geismar has mainly assembled essays and book reviews written for the New York Times, the Nation, the New Republic, the Saturday Review and the like. About a third of the book was written just for the book, but that isn't enough.
AMERICAN MODERNS: FROM REBELLION TO CONFORMITY,
by Maxwell Geismar (American Century, $1.95).
It's a strange hodge-podge of writers assembled here. Dreiser is considered as the author of "Sister Carrie" (the essay is for a paperback edition of that one-time shocker)—a "work of art, as fresh and interesting today as when it was first written." John Dos Passos is the writer in collapse, as frantic to protect what he's got as he was to attack his class in his golden twenties. ("Class" it is, too; make no mistake of that; this old man made the complete ideological swing.)
WILLIAM FAULKNER is considered from "Intruder in the Dust," "Requiem for a Nun," "The Town" and "A Fable." Geismar finds Faulkner wanting. Sinclair Lewis is the bad boy of the twenties who now looks like a very conventional man of the middle class. As for James Gould Cozzens, well, people didn't really like "By Love Possessed," not even the incredibly detailed sexual passages.
Many of us are tired of reading about this bunch; we've had them in literary criticism for years. What of the new writers? Norman Mailer never grew up beyond "The Naked and the Dead." John Hersey is a man of conscience, his "The Wall" a complex and brilliant book. Nelson Algren is the poet of the underworld. J. D. Salinger is the author of the wise teen-ager. Saul Bellow is the novelist of the intellectuals. James Jones (for "From Here to Eternity" alone) belongs on the honor roll of postwar novelists. —CMP