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Summer Session Kansan Tuesday, July 31, 1962
Confusion in Politics
A week from today Kansas voters will go to the polls to set the stage for November's political showdown which will decide Kansas' representatives in Washington and the state house.
Campaigning has been heavy the past several weeks with office-seekers touring the state making speeches. Every day there are short newspaper stories saying that so-and-so said such-and-such.
ONLY DURING election time do voters really have the opportunity to learn what an officeholder believes. Rarely does a voter ever see their representatives' name in print except during an election year.
The hottest races are between James B. Pearson and Edward F. Arn for the Republican nomination for Andrew F. Schoeppel's unexpired term in the Senate, and George Hart and Dale Saffels for the Democratic nomination for governor.
Paul Aylward, Democrat, is unopposed for his party's nomination for the Senate and Gov. John Anderson remains unopposed for the Republican nominee for governor.
This disturbed us since we believed that the third district probably had one of the most unusual slate of candidates in the nation.
THE PRIMARY CAMPAIGN claimed its first victim last week when Coffeyville rancher Reb Russell backed out of the Third Congressional District race in Southeast Kansas.
"Variety" described the three who were seeking the Democratic nomination and the Republican incumbent who was running unopposed in his party.
THE FOUR PERSONALITIES involved were unique.
Russell was making his first try at an elective office. His qualifications were that he is a former cowboy movie star and All America football player at Northwestern. He starred in the shoot'em-up westerns along with Tom Mix. He rode a white horse, "Rebel," and always captured the bad guys and won the pretty girl.
Another Democratic nominee is Denver D. Hargis, who served a term in Washington as representative two years ago. When Hargis ran for re-election he was defeated primarily because he loaded his payroll with relatives. His wife was
his secretary which added an additional $10,000 to the Hargis payroll.
SOME CLAIMED that it did not matter who Hargis had working for him just as long as the work got done, but many voters did not like the idea that the Hargises were getting rich, so they voted him out of office.
The third Democratic nominee is not a newcomer to the political scene, but nevertheless, an unknown. He is State Senator Wade Myers of Emporia who is known only in the northern part of the district. All Southeast Kansas voters can say about him is, "Who is he?"
The winner among the three Democratic nominees will face the Republican incumbent, Walter McVey, who is running unopposed.
McVEY HAS CONTRIBUTED little to his district during his two years in office.
His primary newsworthy legislation was a bill he proposed in the House the first of the summer banning the wearing of bermuda shorts in the Capital and the White House by tourists.
For a representative of an economically depressed area like Southeast Kansas, it is evident he is not serving his constituents. He did make a definite attempt recently to promote his image as one who is trying to better the area he represents, by announcing that he has invited a major electronics industry to investigate Southeast Kansas for possible location of a plant.
MANY VOTERS will take this to be "a new industry is moving in." but in essence it is just a campaign device to promote good will and nine chances out of ten, the industry will never locate there.
The third district is a good example of how utterly confusing and mixed-up politics are. Another good example will follow the primary election, when all the defeated candidates start telling the people what good-ol'-guys the persons that defeated them are.
This last week is the time when activity will be strong in a desperate attempt to influence voters to cast their ballots.
The candidates are, as one office-seeker said, "running scared." For the primary winners another three months of campaigning lies ahead. For the losers, lies spoils only awarded them if they endorse their victors. Steve Clark
Peace Corps Successful
By Harry Ferguson United Press International
WASHINGTON — In these days when President Kennedy is hearing more from Congress and enjoying it less, he can seek solace in recalling the March day when he made what appeared to be a reckless throw of the dice and came up with a natural.
No project of the Kennedy administration started out with such dim prospects as the Peace Corps. The measure of its success is that Sen. Barry Goldwater, who is almost always on the other side of a high fence from Kennedy, has said kind words about it. His son, Barry, Jr., even has discussed with his father the possibility of joining the Peace Corps without causing a parental explosion.
THE PEACE CORPS was born in March, 1961, at a time when Kennedy was new in office, fresh in viewpoint and full of confidence. Hidden around the curves that fill the road of the future were such things as the defeat of his farm bill, his debacle on the issue of medical care for the aged and Billie Sol Estes.
he took a deep plunge and launched the Peace Corps by violating almost every rule that a president should observe in his relationship with Congress:
- He financed its opening stages with money drawn from an emergency fund that is at the disposal of the White House, thereby assuming personal financial responsibility for the success or failure of the project.
- He didn't even wait to consult Congress. He created the Peace Corps by executive fiat.
- At a time when there was muttering about a Kennedy dynasty because of the appointment of
his brother as Attorney General, he named a member of his family to head the Peace Corps—Sargent Shriver, his brother-in-law.
He agreed that young men could defer their military service if they joined the Peace Corps, which didn't please voters whose sons already were undergoing basic training.
THE PEACE CORPS has had its troubles and a couple of times brushed close to disaster. But earlier this year when Shriver appeared before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and asked for legislation to double the size of the Corps and spend $63 million during the coming fiscal year he got a unanimous vote of approval.
Successful applicants go through a training period in the United States and a briefer one in the nation to which they are assigned. The corps has 917 persons on duty in foreign countries and 190 in training. There are 2,542 in training in the United States. In the total of 3,649, there are 1,383 women. It costs $9,000 a year to sustain a member of the Peace Corps. Eighteen per cent of the persons who
The basic idea of the Peace Corps is that Americans will go into undeveloped nations and help in any way they can. Anybody over 18 years of age is eligible, and a 70-year-old man recently was cleared as an expert on heavy machinery. The term of service is two years. The salary is $75 a month, banked in the United States and held until the corpsman is discharged. The living allowance varies. An American teaching school in Ghana gets whatever the native school teacher earns. Housing is free, but it has to be the same housing available to natives.
The Peace Corps never goes into a country until it is invited. The fear that the low wage would discourage college graduates turned out to be groundless. There have been a total of 28,886 applicants.
SIXTEEN MEMBERS of the Peace Corps have been fired or resigned after arriving in foreign nations. One man got off a plane in South America, took one look and caught the next plane home. Then there was the day when Miss Margery Michelmore wrote a postcard to a friend and carelessly dropped it in a street in Nigeria. She was a school teacher, a graduate of Smith College and a resident of Foxboro, Mass. In the postcard she told a friend in the United States about the "squalor and absolutely primitive conditions" in Nigeria where people cooked in the streets, bathed in the streets and went to the toilet in the streets.
go into training are washed out for lack of skill or personality defects.
Nigerian students picked up the card, reproduced it and circulated it. A protest demonstration was held, and for a while it appeared that Miss Michelmore had sunk the Peace Corps single-handed. She apologized to the Nigerians, got on a plane and came home and waited to see whether she would be fired. The Peace Corps stood by her and she was employed in its Washington headquarters until she resigned about three months ago to be married.
Such things cast occasional blankets of gloom over Peace Corps headquarters, but there is always one consolation. They have been denounced by the Russians as "imperialist agents." When you're seeking money from Congress, that's good.
A ROOM WITH A VIEW, by E. M. Forster (Vintage, $1.25).
One is tempted to compare this novel about an English girl in Italy with the "international novels" of Henry James. It seems to deal with the same things—conflicts in culture, contrasts in settings and the like. But chiefly this delightful story is a light comedy of manners, which starts in Italy but later shifts to England.
It is no "Passage to India," but it is entertaining and perceptive in its own right. The story is that of Lucy Honeychurch and her old maid cousin, Charlotte Bartlett, who keep bumping into an Englishman and his son, the Emersons, in Florence. Charlotte can't accept such obviously low-class types as fit associates, especially after the younger Emerson has the gall to kiss the blushing Lune.
So the Emersons—and Italy—are forsaken. But the Emersons and Italy—overtake Lucy in England, and it should surprise no one that she and young George Emerson are honeymooning in Florence at the end of the book—in that same "room with a view" the obnoxious Emersons once had tried to offer the traveling ladies from England.—CMP
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THE GREAT CRASH, by John Kenneth Galbraith (Sentry, $1.35).
This is a good book to read these few weeks after Wall Street had those troubles that headline writers linked to those of 1929. But Galbraith (that same controversial gentleman of the Kennedy administration) would remind us that things are somewhat different today
Take margin requirements. These were unimportant in the laissez-faire days of the twenties. Take the whole business climate. Times were ripe for a depression in 1929. This Galbraith makes quite clear.
He makes it clear in that bright style that can illuminate economics even for the relatively economically illiterate. He helps to blast some myths in this book—Hoover didn't cause the depression, for one thing. For another, there were more suicides in the bullish summer of 1929 than in the bearish fall of the same year when Wall Street laid an egg—more suicides even in the investing sectors of the population, as a matter of fact.—CMP
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SPECIMEN DAYS, by Walt Whitman (Signet Classics, 60 cents).
Too few readers have had the opportunity to read the beautiful prose of Walt Whitman. In this volume, Signet makes available that diary of the great poet, and it is a revealing diary.
It doesn't tell us all we want to know about Whitman, like the ferment of writing "Leaves of Grass" and his reaction to its reception. But there are fine word portraits of Washington in the Civil War, sketches of Lincoln, descriptions of Civil War hospitals (where Whitman was a nurse) and of dying boys of both North and South.
Whitman was a nurse) and of dying boys there are nature sketches of the country around Camden, N. J., where Whitman spent his last years. There is a fine section on the American prairies, which Whitman visited in old age (Kansas and the University of Kansas are depicted here), and the mountains. He loved Denver and the fields of wheat and the coreopsis, a little flower which seemed to follow him everywhere.
As a grand old man of American literature Whitman wrote about other grand old men, so there are warm sketches of Emerson, Longfellow, Bryant, and, of all people, Poe. Here is a book all persons who love American literature should have on their library shelves. CMP
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THE SHAME OF THE CITIES, by Lincoln Steffens (American Century, $1.25).
Here was the greatest of the muckrakers, and an American idealist whose writings, despite their dated subject matter, are a penetrating commentary on government and morals even today. "The Shame of the Cities" is chiefly of historic interest, but along the way Lincoln Steffens gives his views on corruption and politics.
years ago. Tenderloin wasn't runny to S. S. McClure and looked at government in St. Louis, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Chicago and New York. New York came off best; it was reform government then, and it was trying to do better. So was Chicago. Philadelphia wasn't. To Steffens that city was almost the chief symbol of municipal corruption.
He didn't just blame the bosses and the crooks. All Americans share the blame in the Steffens view. He was not amused by the boys who had their grimy paws deep in the collection buckets 60 years ago, "Tenderloin" wasn't funny to Steffens.
Steffens, incidentally, was a great stylist. And his conception of journalism was a broad one, for to him the journalist had the obligation not only to report but also to try to improve society at the same time.-CMP
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HUMAN SOCIETY IN ETHICS AND POLITICS, by Bertrand Russell (Mentor, 60 cents)—an examination by the great philosopher of sources of ethical beliefs and feelings, an outline of moral codes, a discussion of ethics and politics, and a concluding chapter on "politically important desires."
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BLUE ICE. by Hammond Innes (Ballantine, 50 cents)—a thriller set in the snowy wastes of Norway, where a man had tried to find the wealth in an ice-bound mountain. Saturday Review: "Excellent in every department."
SUMMER SESSION KANSAN
NEWS DEPARTMENT
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Steve Clark and Karl Koch Co-Editors
THE DUTY DEPARTMENT
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bonnie McCullough and Bill Woodburn Co-Business Mgrs.