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University Daily Kansan
Friday, March 20,1964
Unemployment
Poverty lurks in the midst of plenty—for even the bitter, baffling problem of unemployment exists on the KU campus.
Today, students undoubtedly earn more, spend more, and enjoy more material wealth than students of the past. Yet within this there lies a paradox: 70 per cent of the whole student body is jobless. Out of this 70 per cent, more than 10 per cent is willing to work, provided there are good paying jobs available or better—white collar—jobs available. There are more than 200 students, searching for any type of employment to earn some money.
MANY STUDENTS, enrolled and registered at KU with a hope of obtaining a job on the campus, are disappointed by the employment situation on the campus. Their efforts to find work and money to care for their needs, fees, books have increased. The whole problem is that there isn't enough work for everybody.
At least six in every 10 students who drop out in the middle of the school year are forced to leave the college because of finance and unemployment problems.
THE PROBLEM HAS arisen principally because some students want only particular kinds of job. Lawrence, being a small industry town, is not able to provide these particular types of jobs.
The problem has become more acute, since the number of students is annually increasing. In the past, more people were looking for student help; and today more students are looking for extra work. The University can't afford new channels of work for this growing number of students. The present state of unemployment is caused by the disproportion between the number of students and the number of jobs available.
Also, there is a sharp increase in the employment percentage of junior and senior high school students on the campus. This has created a complex and undesirable situation.
The two places on campus which employ the most students, Watson Library and the Kansas Union, are causes of this poor employment condition. These two places hire junior and senior high school students because they are cheap labor. These places do not have to pay higher salaries
to these high school boys and girls. The salary given by these two places ranges from 65 cents an hour to $1 an hour.
THIS IS UNSOUND. These boys and girls do not actually need employment. They work even for this low salary just to get extra pocket money. They don't need money to support themselves. If these two places stopped hiring these junior and senior high students, there would be more vacancies for college students and the degree of their finance problems would be reduced. These high school boys and girls can be replaced with college students who have to work in order to support themselves while in school.
The University has established an employment bureau in Strong Hall to assist the students in locating jobs. The bureau is responsible for aiding some 1,000 men and women students to attend college each year. These students do everything from taking care of children and washing windows to chauffeuring and sign painting.
THE METHODS USED BY the bureau are quite commendable. The office works the year round, sending out letters to Lawrence home owners, business houses and members of the faculty and requesting them to offer employment to students.
The problem can be solved if every person who can possibly give work should use the college student help.
There are a number of houses in Lawrence that could take a college student in to do work just for a room if the owner would just realize it. There are a lot of odd jobs around a house which students would gladly do to put a roof over their heads.
The number of jobs could be increased greatly if the faculty and townsppeople would just stretch a bit, look around, and find several hours work a week for students.
In short, the problem would be solved if these people would just simply help students to put themselves through college.
Let's hope that the winning political party in the coming election will carry out their student work planks and solve this problem.
- Vinay Kothari
Dreams, Aspirations of JFK's Visit To Latin America Deteriorate
By Phil Newsom
UPI Foreign News Analyst
"We have made a beginning, and the fruits of that beginning . . . give cause to hope for the future." President John F. Kennedy at the San Jose Conference of Central American presidents, March 19, 1963.
And what of those hopes a year later? Two of the six Central American presidents present on that day fell to violent revolution. A third Central American nation, Panama, became locked in bitter controversy with the United States. Cuba remained a symbol of Communist penetration of the Western Hemisphere.
And hopes and aspirations remained largely a dream.
* *
It was warm and pleasant that day a year ago in San Jose, Costa Rica, dimmed only slightly by the volcanic ash drifting down from erupting Mt. Irazu.
And when the President of the United States stopped speaking and stepped from the platform, he and the warmly affectionate crowd of 35,000 surged toward each other, the one ignoring his security guards and the other the restraining ropes which burned hands, wrists and midriffs from the pressure of the throng behind.
THE SCENE was El Bosque, the huge housing project being built just outside San Jose with funds from the Alliance for Progress.
For the president, his trip to Costa Rica and the meeting with the six Central American presidents had been a succession of triumphs both in public and in the serious work of the conference.
And among the presidents of Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Panama there had been demonstrated a unity of purpose holding out hope for a new stability and a new way of life for 12 million people to whom poverty and violent revolution has become a tradition.
But within the year:
THE GOVERNMENTS of Guatemala and Honduras would fall to military coups.
"The establishment and maintenance of representative and constitutional government is an essential element in the Alliance for Progress." Rusk said.
From Washington would come a new warning against the new upsurge of Latin American military governments. The United States views the rise of such governments "with the utmost gravity," said Secretary of State Dean Rusk.
Diplomatic relations between the United States and Panama would be broken by a renewed dispute over the Panama Canal.
And upon Costa Rica, the most democratic and stable of all Central American governments, tragedy of another sort would fall.
During Kennedy's visit, the falling ash from the erupting volcano Irazu had been but a minor inconvenience, irritating to the eyes and to breathing but an irritation which quickly would pass.
IT DID NOT pass and Costa Ricans now recall that it was only 43 years ago that the same volcano nearly destroyed the original capital of Cartago at the volcano's base. Today, cattle are dying in ash-covered pastures, thousands of acres of coffee have been destroyed and in related industries unemployment is spreading. Volcanologists said Irazu might continue to erupt for the next five years.
- * *
When Kennedy went to San
Jose it was to discuss with the six other presidents the Alliance for Progress and the economic integration of Central America, which had made its first feeble beginnings in 1960 with the creation of a Central American common market first composed of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua and later joined by Costa Rica.
"WE WILL BUILD a wall around Cuba-not a wall of mortar or brick or barbed wire, but a wall of dedicated men determined to protect their own freedom and governeity.
In his opening speech to the conference in San Jose's baroque opera house, the president declared:
And it was to economics that the conference devoted most of its attention. The Central American presidents promised to work toward integrating their economies and to press reforms in agriculture, taxation, education, public administration and social welfare.
sovereignty.
... we cannot be satisfied with the progress we have made. People who have waited for centuries for opportunity and dignity cannot wait much longer."
President Kennedy pledged U.S. financial aid, including a $6 million survey to determine how such aid could best be applied for the benefit of all six countries.
Politically, the final communique avoided direct mention of Cuba, but pledged further efforts to halt Soviet expansion in the Western Hemisphere and declared communism the greatest obstacle to Central America's economic development.
The United States already had pledged large sums toward the
(Continued on page 3)
"It's A Shrewd Move To Confuse Our Opponents"
BOOK REVIEWS
IDEOLOGY AND POWER IN THE AGE OF JACKSON, edited with an introduction by Edwin C. Rozwenc (Doubleday Anchor, $1.45).
George Caleb Bingham's famous genre painting, "Stump Speaking" adorns the cover of this excellent new paperback, one of three with which Anchor Books inaugurates its "Documents in American Civilization Series." These first volumes, if they are representative of coming volumes, will give strong academic competition to the Amherst series, "Problems in American Civilization."
The editor of this volume has had considerable experience in the Amherst series, as a matter of fact. In this new book he takes key documents from the Age of Jackson, paintings as well as writings, to illustrate what was developing in American civilization 130 years ago.
A varied group of writers is assembled here. The names include George Tucker, De Tocqueville, Michel Chevalier, Webster, the American Whig Review, James Fenimore Cooper, Emerson, William M. Gouge, the National Trades Union, the McGuffey Readers, Horace Mann, Charles G. Finney, Jackson himself, William Leggett, Roger B. Taney, Thomas Hart Benton, William M. Holland, Francis J. Grund, Davy Crockett, the Democratic Review, George Bancroft, Henry Clay, Orestes A. Brownson and Calvin Colton.
COMMENTATORS ON THE DECADES of the common man, therefore, include French observers, Whig politicians, a novelist, the essayist of self-reliance, a pioneer educator, a revivalist, Democratic politicians, a New York newspaper editor, a Supreme Court justice, a braggart of the frontier, a historian and a Unitarian-turned-Catholic.
What does this illustrate, then? Diversity more than anything. Diversity is what keeps students of American civilization from finding the synthesis they seem to be striving for. Even as the common man of Jackson was finding a voice, others were speaking critically of democracy, even an individualist like Emerson. And Jacksonianism meant more than the rise of the frontier. Many of the writings concern the new meanings of governmental power, and the conflict between labor and capital.
The selections generally are excellent. So are the illustrations. American Studies people long have recognized the importance of both folk art and sophisticated art in understanding a culture. Rozwenc uses Thomas Cole's elaborate and fantastic allegory of civilization; views of Lowell, Mass., where experiments in industry and education were taking place; frontier folk in the grip of revivalism; cartoons assailing "King Andrew," John Neagle's familiar "Pat Lyon at the Forge," and that fantastic home of P. T. Barnum called "Iranistan."—CMP
THE RECONSTRUCTION. A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY: 1865- 1877, by James P. Shenton (Capricorn, $1.75).
Though this volume may be used as straight history, it should be regarded as one more in a long line of recent paperbacks that make available the key documents that undergird history. In the present climate of conflict over race, such a book is of particular importance, for the period of Reconstruction may be said to be at the base of today's difficulties.
Like others before him, James P. Shenton uses Appomattox and the 1876 election as beginning and terminal points, though some documents go slightly beyond 1876 and 1877. Writings are included from publications of the day, diaries, letters, orders, and we find here the Black Code, Ku Klux Klan confessions, descriptions of the despoiled South, arguments over the capacity of the Negro to vote and perform in public life, and the like.