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I « ENCOURAGING ACTION Two actions announced last week on the County Council legislation for Laurens County are encouraging. The Laurens County legislative delegation introduced legislation to jraise the salaries of the five council members from $1,200 to $2,400 a year. This was done in an etfort to try to attract competent, qualified candidates for the county’s first Council, which will take oftice next year. No one can make a career of the County Council at $2,400 per year but the figure is realistic in that council ..members will not be asked to serve at a financial sacrifice. The new salary, which already has been approved in the House of Representatives, should at least cover councilmen’s expenses. * On another front, it was announced that the Greater Clinton Planning Commission is having a study con ducted on the County Council legisla tion. J. C. Thomas, chairman of the Planning Comtmission, explained, “This bill, which already has been passed but which still may be amended, is of vital importance to Laurens County. Our county will be governed according to the bill. We feel our Planning Com mission should understand it thor oughly. Also, if any changes are to be recommended, now is the time to do it. It takes effect next January.’’ We applaud the Planning Commis sion's interest and attitude. We hope that all citizens will make an effort to be familiar with and understand the County Council method of operation. As Mr. Thomas said, it is of vital im portance. We support the County Council method of governmental operation be cause it will give us more ‘home rule’ in Laurens County. We are also hope ful that we will have a field of quali fied candidates for these important posts. We encourage civic clubs and other organizations to become informed about the County Council and to en courage progressive, industrious peo ple to offer for County Council. HIPPIES' ARENT NEW Those who are troubled by the ‘hippie-types’ often feel that the long haired, unwashed, dissatisfied young people are the burden set aside for our particular day and time. And some of the hippies seem to have the idea that they are entirely unique (“We are the best educated, most in telligent generation in the history of the world,” one of them commeted re cently on national television.) For both groups, we recommend this quotation: “. . . A youth approached me. He was bearded; his clothes were dirty; he wore a student’s cloak and he look ed like a typical New Cynic of the sort I deplore. I have recently writ ten at considerable length about these vagabonds. In the last few years the philosophy of Crates and Zeno has been taken over by idlers who, though they have no interest in philosophy, deliberately imitate the Cynica in such externals as not cutting their hair or beards, carrying sticks and wallets, and begging. But where the orginial Cynic despised wealth, sought virtue, questioned all things in order to find what was true, these imitators mock all things, including the true, using the mask of philosophy to disguise li- cense and irresponsibility. Nowa days, any young man who does not choose to study or to work grows a beard, insults the gods and calls him self Cynic.” That was written by the Roman Emperor Julian in the Fourth cen tury A.D. MARK MARCH 10 Mark down March 10 as hopefully, an important date in the progress of Clinton. That’s the day a public hearing will be held on one segment of the 1 proposed by-pass around Clinton. The segment is on the east side of Clinton, . extending from S.C. Route 72 south to S.C. Route 72 north. The by-pass is badly needed, as we have pointed out many times in our editorial columns. We encourage a good attendance at the public hearing. W r e also encour age the expression of views by per- . . sons who will be affected by this seg- o ment of the by-pass so that State ' Highway Department officials will get a true picture of the public’s senti ment. Circle March 10 on your calendar. We hope it will be a major step for ward for Clinton. MINORITY? We read with interest a recent re port that psychological group sessions are planned in Greenville for “normal” people. That doesn’t really surprise us. The way things have been going, “normal” people are the ones who need help these days. WORTH ABOUT '".Today responsible men of action are determined to help bridge the affluence gap, to help change the conditions that are the root causes of our prob lems—not only in unemploy ment, but in education, medical care and housing. Businessmen are helping lead many of these efforts because they know their image can be no better—not only in the eyes of the poor but "Just a slight formality..." Peace Comes T» Biafrs ... m ’ .> • v • '2«CHlE50tE - Kinff Fee tan* Syndicate Pollution And Protest also in the eyes of the public and especially in the eyes of today’s college generation— than the performance of the business system in serving all our citizens. John A. Hill, President Aetna Life & Casualty BY THURMAN SENSING Executive Vice President Southern States Industrial Council Many shrewd political ob servers conclude that prevention of air and water pollution will be one of the big issues of the 1970s. The way candidates for office are climbing aboard the anti-pollu tion bandwagon suggest that these observers are right. There’s potential for both good and bad in the enthusiasm for environmental protection. Cer tainly, air and water pollution is very important. The air we breathe and the water of our streams are priceless national resources. The health of our peo ple depends on success in deal ing with pollution. Progressive industry is just as concerned as any other group with checking pollution -- more so, in fact, since innumerable companies are devoting large sums to prevent ing air pollution and to cleaning up water used for industrial pur poses. The danger is that the anti pollution drive will fall into ir responsible hand and be guided by emotionalism rather than lo gic. The ultra-liberal WASHING TON POST, among other jour nals, has suggested that the fight against pollution is a “new focus for student protest.” If there’s one thing the anti-pollution cam paign doesn’t need, it is the ir responsibility and emotionalism that has characterized organized student protest in recent years. To be sure, activity by res ponsible, informed students is desirable. Volunteer community efforts to get rid of pollutants and litter are very much needed. Anyone who has traveled in Wes tern Europe knows that the coun tries on the Continent are doing a far better job than we are doing in getting rid of street litter. What should be hurtful, however, is an anti-pollution drive that has political overtones of a fight against free enterprise. Unfor tunately, such overtones can be detected in some areas and some pollution controversies. If the New Left becomes heavily invol ved in the anti-pollution struggle, it undoubtedly will seek to por tray industry as a demon that wants to pollute America. Progressive industry already is fighting pollution -- for com- monsense economic reasons, if no other. In industrial operations, pollution is synonymous with waste. Thus modern companies are trying to trap pollution em itted from smokestacks and en- devoring to transform the wastes into useable by-products. Ameri can industry already has devoted huge sums to this end. Most water pollution, of course, is of an organic charac ter and isn’t the result of in dustrial processes. But industry often gets 100 per cent of the blame. More public information is needed on this point. Beyond this, there is a need for understanding and pers pective on the part of lawgivers and the general public. Some de gree of pollution of our environ ment is inevitable as long as human beings exist on this pla net. Every bit pf heat generated represents thermal pollution of the atmosphere, but mankind can’t get along without heat sour ces. Aircraft pollute the skies with jet fumes, but modern man wants considerable more rapid means of transportation than sailing or paddling. The need is for the federal government and the states to de velop environmental standards that cover the requirements of health and economic progress. A community could eliminate in dustrial air and water pollution if industry were eliminated -- but modern society can’t do with out industrial plants. Ironically, many of the people who are ready to sacrifice industry in order to get the kind of pure air one ex pects in a national park also are insistent that government acti vely participate in raising living standards. Well, we live in an industrial era, and that’s what the vast majority of people want. They want the jobs and tax revenue generated by industry. If extre mists among the ranks of anti pollution workers gain the upper hand, there won’t be any way to raise living standards. Economic advances are the direct result of private investment in indus trial operations. Fortunately, the same Ameri can industry that generates jobs also generates anti-pollution know-how. Reasonable standards can be developed and put into effect. Meanwhile, local govern ment can zone land areas for in dustrial, residential, and recrea tional uses. In other words, the pollution problem can be over come in the United States with out creating a politically-orien ted “protest movement” and with out anyone becoming irrational about industry. American industry has a fascinating story to tell about its anti-pollution efforts. It should be incouraged to tell the story so that professional protesters won’t have an opportunity to move into the forum of public dis cussion and vilify American en terprise. 2-B—THE CHRONICLE, Clinton, S. C., Jan. 29, 1970 SENATOR STROM i THURMOND M reports to the "PEOPLE THE DECADE PAST Kindergarten Finances COLUMBIA - Which costs more, providing state-supported kin dergartens for children or not providing them? The South Carolina Department of Education reports that 9,304 children were retained in the first grades of public schools last year. That’s about 14.1 per cent of the total first grade en rollment having to repeat the first grade. In taxpayer terms, the total cost of these first-grade repeat ers is about $3,451,784. That’s multiplying the number of repeat ers by $371, or South Carolina’s per pupil outlay for elementary children last year. A basic argument supporting expansion of state kindergarten programs is reduction of the number of children having to re peat the first grade. Well-or ganized kindergarten programs prepare a five-year-old for more successful entry into the first grade and beyond. And it doesn’t require new math to figure this: that $3.4 milliod necessary to finance another year in the same class for the same first graders could have been used to extend kindergarten classes to about 20,000 more children. State Department of Education officials admit that some of the children would have repeated the first grade anyway -- but not as many if they had benefited from kindergarten experiences. Which is the wisest investment: providing programs that allow a five-year-old to fall in love with learning for the rest of his life; or putting the same money and the same children in the same classes for another year of ex penses and trial? South Carolinians are applying their money and taking their choice. The state now has 67 demonstration kindergartens serving 3,700 children. An addi tional state appropriation of $1 million has been requested in order to serve a total of 11,500 children next year. There are about 55,000 five-year-olds in South Carolina. With the beginninR of a new decade, the press has been full of many reviews of the past ten years. Most of these summaries, including those by self-styled liberal commentators, have not failed to convey a feeling of dis tress and disappointment with the achievements of the past decade. We are constantly reminded that this is the decade which saw the United States become engaged in a major war abroad, which saw the unprecedented eruption of racial violence in all sections of the country, which saw the doubling of ordinary crime in every city and in rural areas as well, which saw the crumbling of the public educa tional systems, and^. which saw the spiraling of inflation robbing the poor of their subsistence and the prudent of the incentive to save. DECADE OF LIBERALISM When these commentators re cite this dreary account, they all fail to note that this decade past may rightly be called the Decade of Liberalism. It may be a bit unfair to blame all these ills upon liberalism, but we can not omit the fact that our American liberals triumphantly came to power in 1960. They had the optimism of their creed, the confidence of their solutions, and the self- righteousness of those who con sider themselves a morally su perior elite. They not only had handsome majorities in Con gress; they quickly assembled a brain trust of prime intellec tuals to beef up the Executive Branch, and they could count upon the Supreme Court to ex tend any reformist program to absurdity. One would never guess, looking at the slim Presi dential margin in 1960. that thev would be thrown out by a much healthier margin at the end of the decade. One can only conclude that liberalism has failed, just as any obsessive ideological thinking must fail. A man obsessed re fuses to believe he can be proved wrong. He cannot conceive of a test which would invalidate his beliefs. Scientific study is ba<ed upon the rule that the same facts will always give the same results under the same circum stances. But the liberal believes that mankind will somehow be different in the future, if enough money is spent upon education, and the superstitious prejudices of the past are eradicated. LIBERAL PREJUDICE Unfortunately, liberalism it self is a bundle of unexamined prejudices. Chief among those prejudices today is the feeling that our major ills today are war, poverty, racism and ig norance. Each one is considered a “problem”, which, when solved, will result in peace, prosperity, brotherhood and universal de mocracy. However, if we look about us today, we see that none of these is our real problem. To day, the real problem is liber alism itself. For example, we know that every citizen rightly wants to improve his material circum stances. We know that educa tion gives him the tools to d so. But we also know that edu cation becomes irrelevant to the real needs of human beings when it is divorced from the religious and cultural foundations of the people. The liberal drive to re move God from the classrooms, as articulated by the Supreme Court, and to abolish social dif ferences through the abolition of pluralistic school systems amounts to nothing less than cultural genocide. Despite the prescriptions of the liberals for ending poverty and so-called racism, common sense tells us that happiness is not necessarily related to either being poor or being wealthy, and that success depends ultimately unon the choice of wise goals Wars will c-ase -only when the instincts of mankind for aggre< sion and domination fade away Nor need we expect that educa tion will bring wisdom and tolerance. Indeed, the Christian religion teaches us that wisdom is more apt to be found in an humble home than in the palaces of kings’ -or in the lectures of university scholars We must not In* surprised, then, that the liberals who sought to govern in the pa^t decade aggravated our real problems with their supposed solutions. The Nation has, by and large, rejected their ideolog ical approach. The remnants of such thinking must be complete Iv swept aside. Those who now govern must take stock of the pitfalls which yet lie ahead f not prrparrd or pnntrd at govrrnmm t rxpcn»r) PARSON TONES SAYS ■rfr Name-Calling Truce Needed Dear Mr. Publisher: We've inherited another cate gory to put folks in - thanks to the President. We now have a si lent majority. First we had Democrats and Republicans. Then we picked up groups like socialists and communists. Somewhere we discovered the bi gots and the liberals. The flood walls broke down and we got ra dicals, conservatives, doves, hawks, hippies, middle-class, pigs, the loud minority and now the silent majority. Sounds like something the TV commercial people dreamed up. Wonder what happened to just plain people. Personally I’m getting a lit tle tired of folks trying to disect our society like it was a labora tory frog. I never did think you could put labels on people like post toasties. You take Brother George for instance. Everybody in the church calls him a conservative. On the other hand young Ben Twist is known as a liberal. The only trouble Ben is liberal withevery- thing that don’t belong to him, while Brother George is the other way around. Another thing - Ben is the dove and George is tiie hawk. You couldn’t drive George into a fight while Ben has had six brawls since the first of the year. Ben can live in peace with an idea but he can’t get along with peo ple. The silent majority is the most confusing group of all. My wife is silent on some things and talks a mile a minute on others. I know lots a folks who’ll talk their heads off about anything - til you get to religion and they shut up like a clam. So, Mr. Publisher, you see how confusing this whole thing is. Next time they hold a moritorium I hope it’s on name calling. I just hope you and yours enjoy a good week, no matter what you are. Parson Jones "It'd be great to go south for the winter- someplace like Bismarck, North Dakota..." TAX MAZE—‘T regard the complexity of our tax laws as contributing as much as any thing else to the public dissat isfaction,” said Rep. Joel T. Broyhill (R.-Va.). “A year ago, more than 26 million tax payers had to seek paid assist ance in the preparation of their federal income tax returns. More than $600 million was spent by our people to have someone else tell them how much they owed their govern ment. A means must be found to provide a more understand able tax system—one that the ordinary cUjzen can apply without having to i assistance." ig to seek special