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Summer Session Kansan
Friday, July 19, 1963
Grassroot Goodies
Unless things change rapidly, a whole generation will pass believing that the only corrupt government officials are located in Washington, D.C.
This is strange. When you think about it, there is no reason to believe that all the crooked politicians are in Washington. Behavioral scientists can find no tie between ocean air and corruption, nor arid land and good conscience.
ALLOWING FOR the percentage increase accruing to the larger sums of money handled in Washington, there is still reason to believe that there is as much hanky-panky in the 50 state capitols as in the three-letter agencies on the Potomac.
But why do we never read much of grassroots corruption? It is simple; we read nothing of it because little is reported.
And why is little reported of grassroots corruption? Certainly there is nothing in the conscience of news editors which designs such news as unfit for the pages. Sherman Adams and the vicuna coats were big news in nearly every daily paper in the country. So now is the TFX.
THE REASON MUST be more basic.
One reason that more local corruption is not reported is that it is not available to the local papers without considerable expense and trouble. All that is required of the local editors and publishers to print news of corruption in Washington
is the subscription price to one of the major wire services.
Top-flight reporters work in shifts to ferret out malfeasance in Washington. If the record of reporting grassroots government is any indication, the local editors can neither afford the added expense of policing its own pastures nor the added pressure and trouble attending such efforts.
It is too easy and popular to dismiss the performance of the press as being the end result of money-grabbing publishers who care nothing for meeting the obligations which some believe should go with the special rights guaranteed the press.
PERIHAPS IT REALLY is a case of publishers being unable to afford the added expense of hiring competent reporters and permitting them the great amount of time required to investigate public records from which such revelations of corruption are made.
Be that as it may, the original thesis of this editorial remains true: Unless things change rapidly, a whole generation is going to live out its life believing that Washington politicians are disproportionately more corrupt than their state-house brothers.
That hardly seems reasonable, but if all we know is what we read in the newspapers and hear on television, it would be the apparent situation. — Terry Murphy
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
The River Dam and Vice Versa
Dear Terry,
Let's face it, you have been caught with your almanac closed. One cultural characteristic of Americans is that they are somewhat short-sighted when it comes to planning. This means that most Americans consider a five year program to be "long-range," but in fact this is not so.
The actual time required to complete a program in the development of natural resources is much longer. So it is that the Missouri Basin projects have been in operation for almost twenty years now, and the termination of the projects is still many years in the future. Many Americans either can not or do not comprehend the type of program that is concerned with the control of an entire river basin—the ultimate control of a river system that once cost the American public millions of dollars every year in flood damages.
SOME CREDIT must go then to the Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation (whom you did not even mention) for their planning ability. Now it is also true that since most of the people are incapable of understanding the basic principles involved, incapable of realizing that their small valley is part of a much greater whole, these people come to see the dam (or to generalize, any project for the public welfare) in terms of local losses or benefits. This is as true of the supporters of these projects in most areas as it is of the opposition. So it is that the people in the cities are interested in the recreation facilities and the cold cash which will come to their cities. The land-owners, in turn, see only the loss of the "richest farm land in the world" (even desert can gain this title if a dam is proposed for the area). But these elements that are for the dams as recreation areas, or against them for that reason, do not represent the Corps or the Bureau.
These agencies have a purpose which goes far beyond, and indeed conflicts with, the construction of recreation dams and reservoirs. The various agencies certainly do not discourage the support of the city folk who are interested in recreation and dollars; lacking citizenry who are aware of the long-range benefits of these programs the Corps takes its support where they can get it.
Nonetheless, the history of dams which have been considered primarily recreational by the local poplace disproves that the dams have been built primarily for that
purpose. In case where the interests of the local water sport enthusiasts have conflicted with the maintenance of proper flood control levels or irrigation, the utilitarian ends have won out in the great majority of the cases.
YOU SPEAK too with the provincialism that forgets that these little duckponds of Kansas are not the only reservoirs in the Missouri Basin. The list of the really big ones is long: Fort Peck, Garrison, Oahe, Big Bend, Ft. Randall, Gavins Point and others. Dig out your almanac and see what these have
But these big dams are still not enough. Comparatively the Kansas reservoirs are very small, but each adds to a greater whole which can contribute materially to the control of the Missouri-Mississippi drainage. The fact is that these dams are not primarily for recreation, although I do not see why this as a purpose should not be also a valid one.
Recreation may well prove to be much more valuable than surplus producing farm land. What? You say that someday we may need this land to feed our people? Already in existence or in the process of development is irrigation for over 500,000 acres of land. When we need more crops, we will have the water to do so, even if we do have to farm the once-dry uplands.
YET ANOTHER use made of these dams is the production of power. Anyone who pays an electricity bill in Lawrence, where the cost of a kilowatt hour approaches seven or eight cents with a national average of around 3c, can sympathetic with this. The two things which the Plains states lack to become capable of future development are first water and then power. The Missouri Basin projects supply both.
And why were we talking about dams? Because the charge was made in an editorial that both the dams and a proposed prairie national park were planned only for recreation and for money for those who would operate tourist traps. I do not and cannot accept these statements, particularly as they apply to this particular park and these particular dams.
The arguments of Dr. E. Raymond Hall of the KU Museum of Natural History that appeared on your front page are eminently sound. Dr. Hall, as a mammalogist, is familiar with the problems and loss of future scientific information caused by the destruction of a
It is the defeat of this park that will be purely political and concerned with money, not its acceptance. Surely if we can't accept one world, we can make ourselves one nation.
natural habitat. His testimony along with others revealed the fallacy in the arguments used by opponents of the park.
Sincerely, Jon Muller
Guilt Bv Association
May I suggest that the author of the recent editorial "The Rotten Eggs of Golden Geese" indulges in guilt by association and displays an unrealistic if not naive attitude.
First, to correct a few errors, this was not a grand prix race despite advertising propaganda to the contrary. In addition, I should like to know what races the author includes in the category "midwestern grand prix circuit." With the exception of this race and events in Wisconsin and near Chicago, sports car races in the midwest are quite scarce.
I AM NOT SURE whether the author is criticizing racing on purely moral issues or because of the unsavvy behavior of some so called spectators. The first cause is a matter of personal opinion. The second an unjust criticism.
I believe that if more summer spectator events, not necessarily races, were available in Kansas, these spectacle-happy undesirables might distribute their revelry more and not cluster so around this one event which, unfortunately for the sport and its devotees, happened to be a sports car race.
A great many of the rowdy spectators are, I suspect, not sports car fans at all, but merely kids—judging from their behavior—who congregated at the race as an excuse to carouse, drink beer, and display themselves in the sun. I base this on the observation made Sunday of numbers of these "spectators" asleep, drunk, or otherwise occupied and completely oblivious of the race. These are hardly race fans. Such inattention to the race was unique to this race among the several sports car races I've seen.
I QUOTE TWO sentences or portions thereof: "... had the city fathers the sense to look beyond the preparations to sell nearly 10,000 cans of beer on one day, the riot could have been averted . . ." and "It is pointless to argue that they should be able to stage the races without having riots." Since
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It's Such a Little Thing
Because this is such a little thing that I am unhappy about,
we will print it in small type.
But its size is not in proportion to the irritation factor. No sir, My complaint is small but my irritation is great.
I am unhappy because people criticize me unfairly. They try to put me down into the vagaries of man and his machinations so unappreciated.
Like Perry Como, I get letters. But unlike Perry, my letter writer likes to be a teacher. I write to him when he kisses my mouth, or better (in their view) scuttle my newword.
After carefully mixing my acute sense of fair play with natural indignation, I justly realize that my detractors are entitled to vent their wrath, no matter how unfair it may be—in the venting and the effect.
But no amount of effort is sufficient to dilute my righteous indignation towards those who criticize my work without accurate consideration of what I have written. Oh no; the injustice of this is beyond human endurance.
During my Kansan editorial career of more than two semesters, I was involved in advocating for advocacy things which I did not advocate nor even learned.
Cheerleaders accused me of saying it is more difficult to write blasphemous editorials than it is to build school spirit.
I said no such foul thing! Personally, I think it would be infinitely more difficult (not too mention courageous nor commandable) to prance, flit, and gyrate in public—all in the name of school spirit.
And in this very edition, a letter writer accuses me of thinking that politics are involved in plans to build a national park adjacent to Tuttle Creek Reservoir. It is beyond me to contain the fury which such a charge as that gives birth to.
Sir, I demand that you recant. After a more or less careful study of the political elements in the dealings to build national infrastructure, I want to intimate that the Corps of Engineers have a vested interest in building dams or roads to course through scenic national parks.
Why, that's tantamount to poppycock!
Why that's tantamount to poppycock?
But I digress from the main point of my epistle.
It is the fond hope and desire of every editor that his writings would be a sparker among the readers. T would be dull work for reader interest.
But for the love of Mike please, dear letter-writing readers,
do not accuse me of saying sayings which I have not said.
Tis unfair, and sorely tries my restraint. Besides, it hardly adds to a rational discourse of ideas which are fundamental to the proper working of a free, democratic society. And who wants to be guilty of this gross felony against reason?
Terry Murphy
BOOK REVIEWS
SLEEP TILL NOON; BAREFOOT BOY WITH CHEEK; RALLY ROUND THE FLAG, BOYS!; THE FEATHER MERCHANTS, all by Max Shulman (Bantam, 50 cents each).
Read slowly, taken not at all seriously, Shulman is good fun. In "Barefoot Boy with Cheek" he said some mighty funny—and a few mighty tedious—things about college life, draft boards, young Communists and the like in the forties. "The Feather Merchants" dates to the same period, and it has wild things to say about coming home on leave. The other two books are more recent. "Sleep Till Noon" is about marriage, and "Rally Round the Flag, Boys!" about what happens among commuters, PTA members, the Army and married folk in a Connecticut town.
There was a time when Max Shulman was easily the most popular writer with college students, and he had an insidious influence on the campus humor magazine. Here are four of his comedies, all previously printed by Bantam, available in new editions.
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THE NEW WORLD, by Winston Churchill (Bantam, $1.25).
This is Volume II of Churchill's justly celebrated "A History of the English-Speaking Peoples." And it is a tremendous buy for paperback purchasers. In this volume, Churchill writes in his vigorous and entertaining style the story that took place in the new world between 1485 and 1688.
His approach, though somewhat on the popular side, should not scare away scholars. Here we read about the Renaissance and the Reformation, Henry VIII and the clash with Rome, Queen Elizabeth, the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the voyage of the Mayflower, the coming to power of Cromwell, the period of the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
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75 SHORT MASTERPIECES, edited by Roger Goodman (Bantam,
75 cents)—a reprint of a Bantam printing of a few years ago. While it would be pointless to list all the famed writers represented here, a few may be noted to suggest the quality of the volume—Nelson Algren, Ambrose Bierce, Booccaccio, Erskine Caldwell, Chekhov, Stephen Crane, Guy de Maupassant, Dostoevsky, James T. Farrell, C. S. Forester, E. M. Forster, Goldsmith, Gorky, Graham Greene, Hardy, Hawthorne, O. Henry, Irving, Katherine Mansfield, Maugham, Melville, Dorothy Parker, Poe, William Saroyan, Richard Steele, Steinbeck, Strindberg, Tolstoy, E. B. White, Woollcott and Arnold Zweig.
Summer Session Kansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
111 Flint Hall
Telephone VIking 3-2700
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Extension 376, business office
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Member Inland Daily Press Association, Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 St., New York 22, N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturday and Sundays, University holidays, and examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Managing Editor ... Terry Murphy
Staff Writer & Editor ... Linda Machin
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Business Manager
FACULTY
Prof. James Dykes