KANSAN Comment
Forgotten
Richard Nixon's campaign for the presidency, according to reporters, was aimed at the forgotten American, the man in the middle. And, it was the man in the middle who elected him.
Now that forgotten American was remembered for his vote then forgotten again when the administration took office.
President Nixon's recently-announced tax reform mirrors this more than anything else he has done in his rather slow-moving administration. The reform basically calls for elimination or reduction of taxes for the poor and a guarantee that the rich and business will pay taxes. This is fine for the poor who needed the relief and not so fine for the rich who needed to pay taxes.
But what of the forgotten man, the one who bears the brunt of income tax? There seems little relief for the guy who is working for a living but does not have the qualifications needed for accountants and lawyers to prepare his tax return.
The forgotten man's relief will only be the halving of the 10 per cent surcharge, which was supposed to last only one year anyway.
It seems the Nixon team has already forgotten the people who elected it and, incidently, those who pay for the government. It looks as though the forgotten man will remain forgotten until election time in 1972. (ATJ)
THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL
All rights reserved
Publishers/Hall Syndicate
'Well, I see we done dropped another notch on the priority list.'
Professor writes memorial to John Ise
In 1955, on the eve of John Ise's retirement from active teaching at the University of Kansas, the members of the faculty of the Department of Economics and the School of Business published a selection of his speeches and letters under the title THE AMERICAN WAY. In the foreward to that book, now a collectors' item, it says:
To those of us who know John Ise or have felt his influence, KU will thereafter be a different place. We can only hope that somewhere on the campus, another authentic Kansan will hold up the same clear, candid mirror to life about him, will press insistently the claims of reason and will continue to invoke the truly liberal spirit which admits it may not always be right.
John Ise has spent a lifetime trying to drag his native Kansas into the twentieth century. Nobody can say Kansas hasn't put up a fight . . .
Now that John Ise has passed away, it is only fitting and proper that something more than a brief biographical sketch be published in his school paper, for in him the University of Kansas has lost one of its most inspiring teachers and Kansas one of its most illustrious sons.
Born in 1885 of Western Kansas pioneer stock, John Ise grew up to become an outspoken and fearless critic of much of modern American society. A bitter opponent of every kind of dictatorship and tyranny, he advocated a kind of freedom and democracy far beyond any achieved in the United States during his lifetime or likely to be achieved in the forseable future. An opponent of Communism, he yet fought gallantly against the red-baiting of the McCarthy era. An out-and-out liberal, never afraid to speak his mind no matter what the consequences might be, he once answered a student's request to define "socialism" by saying that "socialism is applied Christianity."
John lse's fame as an economist, teacher, lecturer, stouthearted defender of the underprivileged, and unremitting critic of all that he considered wrong in American society went far beyond the borders of his native Kansas and penetrated every
part of our land. His textbook in introductory economics, published by Harper in 1946, sold more copies than any other book of its kind had before. I joined the economics faculty at KU in the year of John Ise's retirement. For many years thereafter, whenever I attended professional conferences and mentioned to colleagues from other parts of the country that I was at the University of Kansas, the invariable comment was: "Oh, that's John Ise's school."
To John Ise the science of economics that he taught and that he lectured on was a living science which found its practical application in everyday life and could not be separated from the political, the social and the cultural aspects of society. A few years ago, when much university teaching of economics had already turned in the direction of mathematics and model building, John Ise was called upon by the Midwestern Economics Association to address the annual meeting on the topic: "Economics, Past and Future." With typical John Ise facetiousness, he started his talk by saying: "I am glad that you asked me to talk on 'economics, past and future,' and not on present-day economics, because present-day economics, I SIMPLY DO NOT UNDERSTAND."
John Ise wrote and talked on subjects that concerned all aspects of life in the United States, and, no matter what his topic, his sharp wit would always delight his readers and listeners, just as his forthright presentation and critical evaluation would make them ponder the points he had made. Permit me to reiterate here some of his pungent statements and comments:
"It is unfortunate that the social poise and polish to be gained by fraternity life go to those who, coming from homes of refinement and culture, need it least while those who come to college with hay in their hair and the aroma of barnyard on their feet enjoy few opportunities for the cultivation of social grace. Yet, this is quite in accord with the biblical principle which governs economic and social life everywhere: Unto everyone that
On college fraternities;
hath shall be given, but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he was about to get. It is surely not a fault of the fraternities that they conform to one of the laws of God."
On "Consumer Values in a Crazy World:"
"Food enables us to avoid hunger; clothing, with our furnaces and thermostats, enables us to avoid cold; knee action cars enable us to avoid being jolted, although we may sometimes pay $5 a day for a riding horse to give us the jolts we miss in the car; by riding to the golf club in a car we may avoid the fatigue of walking so that we may enjoy the fatigue of playing golf; the electric eye shifts our gears and opens the door and turns the water fountain on for us, relieving us of exhausting and fatiguing labor so that we may take our morning setting-up exercises with more zest . . ."
On the lecture system at universities:
"We lecture to students under the lecture and regurgitation system. It is unfortunate that our propensity to lecture is out of proportion to the students' propensity to listen, but the discrepancy is largely made good by the students' propensity to sleep."
On war, peace, and democracy:
"We have won or at any rate ended, actually if not officially, the Second World War at a cost of a million casualties and several hundred billion dollars. Yet we have armies in various parts of the globe and are planning for the Third World War as soon as we can get the budget a little more than balanced and can find a new crop of boys to do the fighting—a defensive war of course, to be fought only for the preservation of democracy wherever it is to be found and wherever there is not too much of it; to be fought only as a way of preserving the peace, of course, for we are a peace-loving people and will be obliged to knock hell out of any other people who do not like our peace, particularly if that nation happens to be communistic. We are not only peaceful, but we are willing to work unselfishly to achieve our
peaceful goals, if we can find out what the goals are."
On having bullfights at universities, instead of football games:
"The university with the biggest bull would be the greatest university; and, of course, the bull would be free of difficulty with grades."
On school politics;
"Much time is given to school politics; and since there are no issues in school politics, this is excellent training for American political life later."
On students concerned primarily with getting rich quickly:
"I do not condemn the students who prefer wealth and ignorance . . After all, wealth may be used for noble purposes, for instance, to add bathrooms in the house. There is a fine spirit of emulation in striving to be a four-bathroom man—or to contribute to the fund for buying football players."
One could go on and on. But let these samples suffice, for the interested student can check out the single copy of John Ise's THE AMERICAN WAY from the KU library for an unsurpassable evening of wonderful reading (it may be checked out from the reserve desk for three days).
One could go on, also, to enumerate John Ise's other accomplishments, including the publication of several books. One could give examples of his humanitarianism and his interest in his fellow creatures, animals as well as humans, exemplified by his generous contributions to worthy institutions and by his actions in private life. Some of these have been mentioned in the papers and have been referred to during orations at his funeral. In any case, this eulogy must come to an end. But John Ise will not soon be forgotten by his students, who may have laughed at his jokes, may at times have disagreed with him, yet could not help but benefit greatly from his thought-provoking and challenging analysis of American society. And for those of us who knew him personally, the memory of this truly great man will live on.
Harry G. Shaffer Department of Economics