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University Daily Kansan Friday, March 23, 1962
The Rock Chalk Issue
The KU Rock Chalk Revue has long been recognized as one of the best student productions in the area and has a tradition of meticulously written scripts and well produced skits. This tradition has been under fire the past three weeks in relation to the charge of unoriginality against the Kappa Sigma-Delta Delta Delta skit which won this year. The KU-Y Cabinet voted not to disqualify this skit because, to quote the Cabinet statement, "there seems to be not enough justification in view of previous infractions."
THE KU-Y CABINET thus admitted that there have been instances of unoriginal work in the Rock Chalk Revue in the past. Members of the Cabinet also said that there was unoriginal work in the winning skit this year but that a penalty should not be assessed, apparently because such action had not been taken in the past
The soundness of this type of reasoning is questionable. The decision shows that the KU-Y has let one more group get away with something which should not even have been condoned. The reasoning is that although instances of unoriginality have existed in the past, the publicity and action pertaining to the problem this year will prevent further instances. A KU-Y official said, "We are going to let the past be a positive guide for the future."
BUT IT SEEMS highly unprecedented that one group should be allowed to break rules simply because it has been done in the past. KU
was placed on athletic probation by the NCAA for actions which have been taking place for years on other campuses without punishment. The NCAA made an example of KU, as it has many other schools, in an effort to strengthen the observance of its rules.
This is something which should have been part of the regulations from the start. A production like Rock Chalk should be something which the participants can be proud of, not only because they have done a good job of production but because they presented new and original ideas.
The KU-Y has said it will draw up specific rules dealing with the area of unoriginality to eliminate any future problems.
ROCK CHALK has become somewhat stagnant in the past few years because an overwhelming number of skits have been aimed at blasting some campus institution, principally the administration. This is beginning to become tiring.
It seems that one of the reasons why the Kappa Sigma-Delta Delta Delta skit won this year was because its theme was different than the others in the show and the general trend of the past few years. This is an indication that a change in the recent pattern of skits is needed, in addition to original work, to bring some new life back into a faltering tradition.
-Bill Sheldon
The Moneyed Class
One of the impressions widely held by both liberals and conservatives of our generation is that the social reforms launched nearly three decades ago by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal have resulted in a steady trend toward the equalization of the ownership of wealth in the United States. Now, an investigation has exposed this notion as a myth—a myth shattered by the revelations of a ground-breaking study by Professor Robert J. Lampman, chairman of the economics department of the University of Wisconsin, published by Princeton University Press. Lampman's data reveal that not only is wealth as unevenly distributed as in the early Thirties, but the current trend is toward even greater concentration in a few hands.
NEARLY THREE decades after the New Deal began, the wealthiest one per cent of American adults once again own twenty-eight per cent of the nation's entire personal wealth, only a minute fraction less than that held in 1933, and their share is increasing. In contrast, the poorest "one third of a nation," whose plight was dramatized by Roosevelt in depression days, now owns only about one per cent of America's privately-held material assets. Furthermore, Lampman's researches show that ninety per cent of the adult population, which includes the newly "affluent" middle class, accounts for less than half of the total wealth.
A particularly disturbing finding in Lammans's detailed report is the disclosure that the percentage of wealth held by the top one per cent of adult population did indeed decline during the depression and the war-marked years between 1929 and 1949. But then the figure began to rise again: it has now reached pre-depression proportions and is still rising.
ONE OF THE ironic aspects of this fluctuating but little-changing pattern of ownership of wealth lies in the nature of corporate stock-holding. For years we have been subjected to a barrage of skillful advertising, sponsored mainly by the largest of corporations and stockbrokers, which has attempted—with considerable success—to persuade the nation that ownership of American corporate stock is now so widespread that our system has evolved into a "people's capitalism." Yet Lampman's painstaking researches show that while in 1929 ownership of 65.6 per cent of corporate stock was concentrated in the hands of
the top one per cent of wealthholders, that figure had risen to seventy-six per cent by 1953, and estimates place the percentage even higher now. The same small group of extremely wealthy individuals holds thirty-two per cent of U.S. government bonds, and virtually all state and local bonds.
A CURIOUS factor concerning Lammman's study is the unusual impact it has had on economic analysts and commentators. With all the statistical attention we give to our society, little of this data on who owns what has ever before been available. After reading Lampman's statistics, Sylvia Porter, the informed syndicated writer on economics, reported, "I freely admit they stunned me." Similarly affected, apparently, was Business Week, which led off its review of Lampman's book with the defensive headline. "'Rich get richer'—but not for long,' and concluded with an apprehensively hopeful forecast that the richest group's share of the wealth "would again start to decline."
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
Week's forecast seems based more on the business interests' fear of public reaction to the news of continuing inequality than on firm economic evidence; In 1953 there were 27,000 millionaires in the United States; today there are more than 100,000. In 1953 there were 2,113 individuals whose wealth exceeded $5 million each; today they number some 10,000. Some months ago the Wall Street Journal acknowledged that despite high taxes "more individuals have become millionaires since World War II than in any comparable earlier period."
EUT AT THE moment, Business
It is true that factors in the economy such as the reforms of the 1930's and the rapid growth of unions in the two decades that followed appreciably increased income from wages and social security programs, creating the greatest middle class in history, and markedly alleviating the privation of those below the middle class. Yet only a few weeks ago, in a message asking for a broad expansion of public welfare programs, President Kennedy could point accurately to a pressing need to end "the poverty that persists in the midst of abundance."
THE ULTRA - CONSERVATIVES—a description that fits most of the richest one per cent—like to draw a picture of an America where a power-hungry government promoting creeping socialism is destroying free enterprise, robbing the hard-working rich to support the indolent poor, and reducing its citizenry to robots drained of initiative. An objective, scientific analysis like Lampman's study of the distribution of wealth exposes the glaring fallacies of this interpretation of recent American history. The truth is that the very persons who complain most bitterly about the direction they claim the nation has taken are among its chief beneficiaries. (excerpted from the March 1962 Progressive)
Daily Hansan
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"I'M AFRAID WE'LL HAVE TO MOVE WILCOX BACK TO TEACHING THE ADVANCED GROUP"
Sound and Fury
OUR KNOWLEDGEABLE elders overlook one important point: The United States is not such a fragile institution that it cannot stand the questioning of even the most radical groups, regardless of their political leanings.
The Student's Position
The panic is ill-founded and worthless. College is the time to test and question ideas. And then someday we can grow up and complain about the wild-eyed brigands who threaten the security of our country.
What I refer to specifically is the activities of students in politics and current events.
Students at Kansas University are in the too usual position of being damned if they do and damned if they don't.
Those who promote or voice favor for "liberal" issues usually are labeled as "pinks" or "comsymps." Students who favor "conservative" viewpoints are just as quickly labeled "reactionaries" or pseudo fascists.
THE VAST majority of students belong to the group which favors neither of these outlooks and being less full of fire and zeal they don't reach the public eye as weirdos. But even this group comes under the gun. They are cussed and discussed for anpathy.
The only way to avoid getting struck with such names is to swallow everything that is put out by professors or government leaders and nod their heads in violent agreement.
—T. M.
By Calder M. Pickett Professor of Journalism
John O'Hara has always had an extraordinary feeling for the American vernacular, and he has been an apt chronicler of the middle class. "Butterfield 8" is early O'Hara, and really much better than the recent bedroom monsters that have arisen out of his typewriter.
The novel achieves a kind of classic status by being added to the Modern Library series. It's about a New York tramp named Gloria Wandrous, who had a sordid experience with an Army major when she was but a child and then proceeds to turn into a gal who is available to almost all comers.
BUTTERFIELD 8, by John O'Hara. Modern Library. $1.95.
SHE MEETS HER FATE. AS MANY doubtless know (not having seen the Elizabeth Taylor movie I can't comment on how closely film parallels novel), in the waterwheels of an excursion vessel. When O'Hara published the book in 1935 there was some belief that he was leaning upon the mysterious death of Starr Faithful in 1931. That being the year of "Butterfield 8" there is every reason to believe that he was doing just that.
There are a set of excellent portrayals in this short but swiftly moving novel, and there are touches that only a social historian like O'Hara would incorporate. There is talk about the depression, there is blame for Coolidge. There is a discussion about going to see Herbert Marshall and Zita Johann in "Tomorrow and Tomorrow" and Jimmy Cagney in "The Public Enemy." There is much atmosphere of speakeasy living, and a bad pun about the then mayor of New York who, in the words of one character, is a "jaywalker."