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« Sdiiotuik Bumper Crop 2-B—THE CHRONICLE, Clinton, S. C-, Aug 13, 1970 PRESS POLICY We agree with Clinton City Coun cil’s move last week to set a definite press policy for the Police Department and Fire Department. The policy is that all police and fire information may be released to the press only by the chief of police or the assistant chief in the absence of the chief. All policemen and firemen have been extremely helpful and coopera tive in their dealings with representa tives of The Chronicle. However, it is understandable that such information should come from the most authorita tive source. In fact, that’s one of the cardinal rules of accurate newspaper reporting—go to the most informed source for your information. The reason behind the policy is that a reporter for a Columbia news paper talked to representatives of the local Police Department after the fire- bombings last month and failed to sep arate fact from speculation in the news article. The local sources gave their opinions of what was behind the firebombings. However, it was just their opinions and they undoubtedly were surprised as everyone else to see the speculation appear in print The speculation could have inflam ed the local situation and could have resulted in great harm to our com munity. The reporting of police and fire news is a two-way proposition. Mat ters of public record cannot be with held from the press. However, news reporters also have an obligation to re port the news factually, steering clear of unsubstantiated speculation. TEAMWORK FOR PROGRESS Now that the smoke has cleared from Tuesday’s General Election, we hope the new City Council will strive for unity of purpose, progressive team work. We hope those who have been en trusted with the progress of our town will get some major goals and work to gether toward those goals It is so easy for such a group to get bogged down in minor disagreements. It takes people of vision and ambitious dedication to keep a community mov ing forward. The people who were elected are entrusted with keeping our community up to date. They were not elected to carry out personal vendet tas. For the first time in recent years, both candidates for the post of mayor ran on specific issues. Both spelled out some of the things they would like to see accomplished. We hope that city council will now pull together as a team to accomplish something during the next two years. We hope that two years from now, Clinton will be a better town. City Council can make it so. A LOVELY LADY Mrs. Hugh (Lib) Jacobs, who died last week, knew no “generation gap.” She was a lovely lady to everyone, young, old and in between. As news of her death went through cflnpnunity last week, some of the .^•Oflunenfs summed up how so many people felt about Lib. A rising senior at Clinton High School commented, “She was always so nice to me, so friendly and so inter ested.” A city employee said, “Mrs. Jacobs always spoke to everyone. No matter what your station in life, she was al ways a friend I never saw her when she wasn’t smiling.” A member of The Chronicle staff, a man in his early sixties, said, “I was in the hospital at the same time Mrs. Jacobs’ daughter was there. She al ways stopped by my room to see how I was getting along. She seemed genu inely interested in my progress. She was so cheerful. She helped brighten my stay in the hospital.” That was Lib Jacobs. A cheerful friend to everyone. She helped bright en so many lives. A lovely lady. "Then you pick him up by the rabbit ears, like this..." SENATOR STROM 4 THURMOND REPORTS TO THE PEOPLE PRESIDENTIAL ADVISERS President Nixon has appar ently repudiated the bad advice piven to him by some of his aides and executive officers. In recent weeks, the Administra tion had taken actions which cast great doubt upon its com mitment to treat the whole na tion with an even hand. The Internal Revenue Service an nounced that private schools might lose their income tax ex emptions, and a Justice Depart ment aide revealed plans to send a special squad of compliance officers to enforce integration in the public schools. These actions were wholly unnecessary either under law or the Constitution. They appeared to assume that the South was guilty before any facts had been developed in the case. They seemed to be examples of the anti-South bigotry frequently found in the North. They re flected the attitude of a bitter sectional philosophy—the phi losophy of the Northeast. WRONG ADVICE Apparently the President’s advisers had been shielding him from the consequences of such actions. The people of the South believe in law and order, and they will obey court orders from which there is no recourse. But they will not willingly accept executive actions which single out the South as an object of attack. I have been watching the Ad ministration since it came into power a year and a half ago. The President has become sur rounded with many liberal and ultra-liberal advisers, with too many of them drawn from the Northeast. The President was elected on the basis of a broad nation-wide coalition, including the South, the Mid-West, and the West. Those who espouse the philosophy of the Northeast did not support the President in 1968, and will not support him in 1972. The South does not like forced integration any more than the North. The statistics show that Northerners are very quick to escape integration if they can. Chicago has achieved only 3.2 per cent desegregation, as de fined by HEW; Gary, Indiana, only 3.1 per cent desegregation; St. Louis only 7.1 per cent de segregation; and New York City only l'J.7 per cent desegre gation. It is unfair to force the Southerners to go beyond the requirements of the law, while the North enjoys immunity. SPOKE AS FRIEND I called these facts to the at tention of the President on the Senate floor. I spoke as a friend who wanted to counsel with him publicly on the course which was best for the good of South Caro lina, of the South, and of the whole nation. I pointed out the dangers of keeping the wrong kind of advisers. Apparently, the President’s good will and common sense won out. Two days after I spoke, the Internal Revenue Service announced that it had granted tax exemptions to six Southern private schools, exemptions which had been delayed for months. IRS also announced that in the future such schools need only submit a letter of declara tion of an open admissions pol icy to secure tax exemption. This eliminates time-consuming litigation, and the threat to donors that they might not be able to claim a charitable deduc tion. Three days later, the Presi dent himself called an unex pected news conference, in which he reemphasized his support for the textile quota legislation so important to the welfare of workers in the South. He strong ly re-affirmed that his Adminis tration will have “a one nation policy—not a Southern strategy, and not a Northern strategy, but a one-nation strategy.” He overruled the Justice Depart ment aide who was going to send a squad of lawyers to coerce the South. These are steps in the right direction, but we will be watch ing to see whether the Adminis tration changes the underlying attitudes being put forward by the crew of liberal advisers. Unless the President makes some fundamental changes, there will be difficult times ahead for the Nation. (not prrparrd <nr printed at gorrrnmrnt rxpente) Volunteers Spark Adult Education St. Luke’s School of Con- tinninf Education is begin- its eighth year in Okla- City, Okla. It provides 80 bonnet for approxi- 800 older adults, ugh the school is een- t§L Luke’s Church, it fUUi and a few Nfifioas faith. January to May each year. For $4 .00 per semester, a person may attend as many classes as he wishes. Lunch is provided for an additional $1.00 per week, with a guest artist present. Teachers and guest speakers are strictly on a voluntary basis and receive no honor arium. Bar. Joseph T. Shackford, founder-director says, "Our school continues to elicit the war mast response of apprecia tion fnxn those who come week by week. It gives a great deal of satisfaction to many, we be- ' lieve. And, for some, it actually is almost their salvation.” The results of a Women’s Bureau survey show that pro vision by hospitals of adeqots child care facilities for their health personnel benefits both employers and employees. Per- soonsl recruitment is improved LABOR LAW REFORM IS URGENT! The need for change in the labor laws is becom ing increasingly evident. Many contracts are being negotiated this year and unions are obtaining ex ceptionally high settlements. As William F. Schmick, Jr., publisher of the Baltimore Sun and recently retired president of the American Newspaper Publishers Association, points out, “It is axiomatic that higher wages cause higher prices. It is likewise clear that as a consequence of overly protective labor laws, the pendulum has swung too far to the side of unionism.” Mr. Schmick listed several major abuses whicn hurt the public: unfair damage to innocent parties from product picketing and product boycotts; NLRB decisions which have almost eliminated em ployers’ freedom of speech in communicating with their own employees; and featherbedding which still plagues many industries. “History has taught us,” he said, “that, when a free people begin to turn on themselves for their greater glory of greed and gold, the very existence of their society is in danger.” Revision of federal and state labor laws to correct the imbalance between management and labor is necessary for the good of the public. Congress should give this subject top priority. Parsoo Jones • * * Smokey Soya: BUR Parson Jones Says HUMANS ARE BORN BACKWARDS Dear Mr. Publisher: For the last several years I been trying to find out what’s wrong with the human race. I think I finally located the cause human beings are born back wards. When they’re young they got lotsa energy, and no sense. When they get old they got lotsa sense and no energy. If you don’t believe this, Mr. Publisher, just look at the American scene. W hen the younguns can take over their elders and run the hole shooting match somebody is pushing and somebody is sleep ing - and I think I know which is which. You take our last P.T.A. me eting for example. Some of the school officials explained a new program that will go into effect next fall. It seems that from now on the kids will be allowed to de cide for theirselves what they want to study. From now on they’ll only have to do what they want to do. I can just imagine my nine year old youngun pick ing his studies. They would run something like this; ice cream, eating, baseball, wrestling, water-fighting, and bubble gum blowing. There’s a hole heap a things that worry me about this approach but there’s a few that really upset my stomach. I al ways beard that a kite goes up against the wind - not with It. And a muscle gets strong only by opposition. In the first place I don’t see how a fella could go through life just doing as he pleased, and in the second place somebody would knock his block off if he tried. Another thing - if a kid is never taught to look qp to his elders, how do we ever expect him to look up to God? Folks have got to learn to look up some where in their lives. And, I was just wandering how a fella could support a family on a bubble-gum diploma. Mr. Publisher, I’ve heard tell that education is the salvation of a nation. If that’s true, we’re sunk. Fve gotta close now and try to figure out if there’s any way to get this machine out of reverse - or at least bow to slow the motor down. Drive carefully! ook r-tprnrftK;, ley lew *?». / / Message From Moscow By Lennart Pearson Head Librarian Presbyterian College MESSAGE FROM MOSCOW By An Observer. 288 pages. Knopf. 1969. Ordinarily, messages from Moscow are blasts of propoganda. This one is different. It is the report of what everyday life is like for the aver age Muscovite under a regime committed to re- Stalinization- The author is a "Russian-speaking, Russian- loving, non-communist westerner” — British, I suspect. His identity is concelaed too protect the workers and intellectuals who confided in him Until two years ago, the author says, he was much enamored of the Marxist vision of a better world. The Russian invasion of Czech Slovakia, however, became a turning point as he observed the reactions in Russia to these momentous events: the passive indifference of the vast ma jority of the citizenry, the monstrous lies by which the government rationalized its actions, and “the knouting of the one Russian in a mil lion who dares to announce that he disagrees.” Evidence drawn from talking with people in all walks of life—chemists, taxi-drivers, office- workers, students, etc.—indicates that the aver age Russian is both willing and able to accommo date himself to the political and social policies of his government to a degree not found elsewhere in civilized countries. In the author’s view, the ex planation for this must be sought in the “Mother Russia” mystique on which the Russian people have depended for a thousand years. Accustomed for centuries to autarchs and oligarchs, it seems to be a matter of no great consequence whether the precise form of tyranny is imperial of commun ist; either one seems able to fill a socially neurotic need. From this report, it is possible to get a good idea of the day-to-day life in the Moscow area: Working-conditions, living standards, medical care, night-life, meat-lines, red-tape, graft, morals, humor—in short, the kind of information from from which the tourist is carefully shielded by a xenophobic government. Or particular interest is the chapter on the intelligentsia—that infinites- mally small segment of the populace whose guilty knowedge of what is really going on makes them the special targets of official wrath. There are two appendixes. One provides an example of typical newspaper fare in the form of a verbatim translation of t h e front page of Pravda for August 21. 1968 (the date of the in vasion of Czechoslovakia), while the other de scribes preparations for the 100th anniversary of Lenin s birth—a saturation propaganda campaign to which Russians respond with about the same zeal as Americans do to TV commercials. Message from Moscow depicts a style of life which must be all the harder to love for being im possible to leave o tip from B.C. MOVES THE MAIL! Teachers 1 Union Dear Editor: As a teacher, I feel that it is necessary to respond to your editorial entitled NEA Presi dent Wants Unions for Teachers in the July 30, 1970 issue. Teachers know more about educating children than any other groq?. Because of this, they should have an important voice in the administration and organization of schools and school systems, today they lack this voice. Through unions they envision the leverage necessary to force Improvements in our educational system. You state that Teachers who go on strike against education of the nation’s young people have no place in the classroom,; ^ I agree. Teachers are a very devoted groqp of people. We, as teachers, must provide the best possible education for each child. Teachers, who have ex hausted all other avenues and who go on strike for decreased class size, for more individual attention to each child’s needs, for better facilities and for a quality education for each child, are doing their patriotic duty. No, we would never strike a- gainst the education of the nation’s young people. We em- plore you to styport us in our demands for improvements in the nation’s educational system. Please, don't ever force us to strike for the right to provide your child with an excellent education. Sincerely Ann L. Furr (Mrs. Olin Furr) 1249 B Cedar Street Fort Dix, N. J.’ 08640