The sun. [volume] (Newberry, S.C.) 1937-1972, April 21, 1955, Image 2
PAGE TWO
THE NEWBERRY SUN
THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 1955
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1218 Colie re Street
NEWBERRY, S. C.
PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY
0. F. Armfield, Jr., Owner
* Entered as second-class matter December 6, 1937
at the Postoffice at Newberry, South Carolina, under
the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879.
SUBSCRIPTION RATES: $2.00 per year in ad
vance; six months, $1.25.
Suppose we did not have type-setting machines? Suppose
a great paper were set by hand. And suppose the papers
were printed by a Washington hand press!!
Suppose you went from room to room and looked for *a
lamp in each room, as well as a lantern to take to the barn,
instead of touching a switch for all the rooms, the yard
and the barn!! Thats what grandpa and grandma did.
COMMENTS ON MEN AND THINGS
By SPECTATOR
You are not interested in such dull subjects as taxation,
are you ? It is serious, you know; and quite burdensome. We
Americans seem to think that every time someone has a
bright idea the Congress, or our Legislature should pass
a law and then put on a tax.
Glancing over aii-advertisement recently I was impressed
by these two items: Federal income taxes, Social Security,
Property tax, and other State* and Local taxes $54,953,000.
In addition, Excise taxes amounting to $26,862,000, a grand
total of $81,815,006, which was equivalent to $5.83 a share.
This Company paid its common stock-holders $1.35 a share.
There you have it: paid in taxes $5.83 a share; paid stock
holders $1.35 a share.
How would we like to do business on that basis? Inciden
tally that was not the heaviest taxpayer in the United
States, by any means.
I do not know who of our people pays the most to the
Federal, State and local governments, but I cited last week
the case of pur taxpayer, a South Carolina Cooperation,
which paid about six and a half million dollars last year.
If we could bring in 500 more enterprises would not the
State, school and local taxes repay whatever reduction
might induce them to come? Would not the payroll of 500
more interprises raise the economic level of our State?
Would not the wagjes flow into the channels of business?
Swashbucklers may serve a useful purpose, sometimes;
they may focus attention on a condition or a problem; they
may glamorize it and make it compelling in its impact on Now whether these are such ‘loopholes’ as the Treasury
Well now here’s a pretty kettle of fish. After a concern
has paid its 1954 taxes, according to law, shall Congress
in 1955 increase those 1954 taxes? I quote a great National
daily :
“By now we are all pretty much inured to the Govern
ment’s sorry practice of changing its tax rules against us
in midstream. But we have not yet come up against the
still worse practice of changing today the rules by which
we paid our taxes yesterday.
It’s bad enough to figure one January that in the cur
rent year you can, say, deduct $600 for each dependent and
then find the following September that Congress has re
duced this to $500, making you have to dig up the extra
tax money. That sort of thing has happened in the past
with tax laws and probably will again.
But suppose that Congress should not only change the
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dependency rules for the current year but for the year
before also, after you had already paid your taxes. Would
you think it either just, or honorable, for the Government
to demand now that you pay extra taxes on your 1954 in
come because the Government in 1955 changed the 1954
rules? Yet, in effect, that is what Secretary of Treasury
Humphrey is asking Congress to do with some of the^tax
provisions Governing 1954 income. And Congress, consider
ing it good politics, is disposed to go along.
Two particular provisions in the tax law in 1954 are in
volved. One says that a company would not be taxed on in
come, such as advance rental payments, until the income
was actually earned. The other permits a company to set
up non-taxed reserves to take care of estimated expenses
falling due in later years.
The Treasury has decided that these are bad provisions.
They cost the Treasury more taxes than it figured on in
1954. It wants them repealed. '
More, it wants them repealed not only for the present
and the future but it wants Congress to repeal them now,
in 1955, for the taxes levied last year, 1954. It wants to
make every company that computed its 1954 taxes on
these rules recompute its taxes on the changed rules and
pay the difference.
with that operate a business that Is a trial to one’s ingenu
ity; others are engaged in a multiplicity of occupations;
some of my friends and associates operate radio and tele
vision stations, with lots of headaches, probably. But “bu§|
smess”, whether we practice law' or medicine, or farming, or
run the hazards of the mercantile career—we live by busi
ness. Even the bankers sometimes have worries.
When I run across a story of exceptional management I
enjoy it. Here is one that I am taking from the Joanna Way
the very readable and attractive magazine of the Joanna
Mills. You may recall that the Joanna Mills breathe the
spirit of my great friend, the late William H. Regnery, of
Chicago. The present head of the operations—Mr. Walter
Regnery, is too modest to tell me what is happening, but I
find the news in the Joanna Way, along with a picture of my
friend John Ro^p, who is looking young and handsome.
Mr. Walter Regnery, in a letter to all Joanna employees
says something I wish to quote:
“It gives me great pleasure to announce that Joanna will
pay another wage dividend this year. , *
The nine-months period upon which profits the wage div
idend is figured was one of the most difficult since thei930s.
Prices for all textiles were such that only the very efficient
and most modern could sell their production and still have
a small margin to pay something to those who provide the
plant and machinery.
Joanna again comes in this classification. Again, your
stockholders, or those who have put up the capital to make
our plant possible, wish to share their profit with you. They
want in this way to show their appreciation for the part you
played in the success we enjoyed this year.
The price we receive for our finished product is by and
large beyond our control. This is set by overall factors ini
the large textile goods market. Therefore, when we are in!
a depressed period, as we have just finished, with prices
going down, we must somehow become more efficient to be
able eVen to meet our everyday expenses, such as cotton,
wages, supplies, etc. • Due to market conditions, one field of
textiles might not be as depressed as others. Here by shift
ing over to these new products we can receive more for our
joint efforts. In the year just finished, we at Joanna fol-
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lowed these two ideas, became more efficient and shifted to
new products. These efforts, plus continued high quality
of workmanship, made our bonus possible. It proves again
the wonderful spirit of cooperation that exists at Joanna.
It required each and everyone’s fullest effort to make all
this possible. 4 ’
Doesn’t it warm your heart to find such happy and effi
cient cooperation?
On the back of a popular trade magazine I find this
statement:
“Foreign textiles sold in our United States in 1954 set a
30-year record! Gongress is now considering a plan to cut
our protective tariff eyen further, inviting more foreign im
ports. We^an’t compete with textile workers who are paid
13c an hour., U. S. tariffs help to equalize the IQ to 1 wage
cost odds against us—lowering tariffs will raise these odds."
Before we become overexcited about foreign nations we
would do well to have consideration for our own people. If
America wishes to help mankind America must be strong;
if we dissipate our energies and means wet shall impoverish
ourqelves and be unable to help others.
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The appointment of 'Judge John M. Harlan to the U. S.
Supreme court raises some questions.
“The principal argument against confirmation was made
by Senator Eastland and was based upon Judge Harlan’s
membership in the Atlantic Union and the American Com
mittee for the United Nations and his refusal to say whether
he thought the U.S. Constitution sould be ovverridden by a
treaty.
According to Senator Eastland, ^he^division in the Supreme
Court oiv this issue was 4 to 4 prior to the confirmation of
Judge Hplan.
If Senator Eastland is correct, the division in the court i
now 5-4 in favor of the supremacy of treaties over the Cons
titution. This would seem to make more urgent the pasi
o# the Bricker amendment, or something similar ^ it. How
ever; it is reported that the Bricker proposal lost ground in
the last election. Furthermore, the sub-committee of the
Senate Judiciary committee which, will consider all proposed
• . Continued on page 7
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our minds or our consciences.
Sober-minded men are not swashbucklers; in fact, sober-
minded men would rather endure the evils they know about
rather than run risks they know not of. You recall that
Shakespeare discussed that Hamlet, as I recall — that
never-to-beforgotten “To be or not to be", and so on.
In a day- of conservative thinking and acting one does
not “stick out his neck". This, of course, is not a conserva
tive age; this is the glorious are of “go-getters". Go-getters
are those who venture out into the deep and then haul -in
the great drought of fishes, while tbe timid souls stay
on the beach and fear that their feet may get wet.
I’ve been wondering if the States must glamorize their
rights by disregarding the Federal mandates. Ireland re
fused to bow to England and England finally had the
sound judgement to recognize a condition that she couldn’t
maintain. Of course so many of us have our fingers in the
pie that we are not willing to stop eating pie just for the
sake of a principle.
Automation — a new word, or at least a word just be
coming popular. Automation it old stuff. I recall attending
a conference of very able men, called together one night
by the late Bishop Finley. It was called to discuss the
evils of “technological unemployment". That was the same
as the so-called, or immediate evils of automation.
? Is this an evil ? The farmer with a tractor is doing more
work than six men. So five are out of work. Many years ago
Ben hf. Sawyer, then Chief Highway Commissioner, told me
that he had employed several hundred men at a dollar a
day to do ordinary ditching and loading .dirt. The men were
glad to get a dollar a day; it meant bread and meat when
everything was cheap and money as scarce as manna in
the Wilderness on the Sabbath. But the law forbade this;
so the Highway Department bought machines, each doing
the work of 20 men. What happened to fifteen or sixteen
men?
Far back, in the Middle Ages, the monks were the news
paper men, journalists and publishers. The monks wrote
the news, as it was gathered by them from visitors. How
large a paper was that? And how often was it sent out?
If we assume that a monk would write five of these letters
a day and that the monk received twenty five cents a day
you observe that the letter was about the equivalent of one
column in your County paper, and that the news was
necessarily confined to rumors and gosip, for the most part.
Today even the County paper carries news from all the
world; and one issue of your County paper is larger than
all the letters fijom the Monastery in a whole year! And
for just two or three dollars for fifty issues!
NoW what is the result? More people get jobs on the news
papers of the United States every year than were engaged
in writing those letters from the dawn qf the Christian era
to this very day.
Suppose you had to pay for a hand made car, what would
it cost? Machinery supplants men for a time, but so reduces
the unit cost that more people can buy the product. Finally
several times as many men are employed as were formerly
employed at that kind of job. *
This technological progress is at the root of modern pro
gress, prosperity and living.
claims is a debatable matter; what the Treasury loses one
year it should collect another because a tax credit taken once
is a credit that cannot be claimed later. Yet be that as is
may — if Congress thinks they should be repealed, let them
be repealed.
But what is this business of increasing 1954 taxes in 1955?
If Congress this year is going to change the tax rates for
1954 why not for 1953 or 1952 or any year? It Congress
can do it to business, why not to you?
There is a prohibition in our Constitution against ex post
^acto laws, which perhaps the Supreme Court will remem
ber if Congress forgets. But it is not the Constitution alone
that argues against this way of law making.
The Government owes a moral obligation to its citizens
that its tax laws shall, for the duration of their term, be
fixed so that every citizen shall know what his ebligation
is. If the Government is to be capricious and decide tomor
row on yesterday’s taxes, no man will ever know where he
stands and the affairs of every man will be reduced to con
fusion." *
I quote a comment on a part of the latest Hoover Com
mission recommendation:
“Five of the twelve members of the Hoover Commission
dissented from various portions of the Commission’s latest
report, on Government loans, guarantees and insurance.
And a lot more dissenting will doubtless be heard when
Congress considers the report, for it steps on some very
tender political toes. Yet, whatever he may think of this
or that particular recommendation, the fair-minded Ameri
can can hardly help concluding that there is something
sadly amiss in the situation the report describes and seeks
to remedy.
The situation is this. In the forty-two years since the
Federal Government got into the lending, guaranteeing and
insuring business, the number of agencies or bodies con
cerned with these activities has mushroomed to one hun
dred four. As of last June 30, the Government had an invest
ment of some $16.9 billion in these agencies, they were
authorized to call on the Treasury for about $14.1 billion
more, and the total of the loans, guarantees and insurance
and contigent liabilities came to the staggering figure of
$244 billion.
How come? How did this free enterprise country get into
such a burdeaucratic mess? Well, the report bluntly notes
the ‘tendency of such agencies to expand their funtions
beyond their original purposes’, the ‘inner impulse to con
tinue when they should be liquidated,’ the ‘tendency to
create activities which could be undertaken by private
agencies.’
Since all this — and there is much more in the report —
is political dynamite, the chances that Congress will apply
the remedies ate not good. But the Hoover Commission
has once again exposed a scandalous situation. It is perhaps
not too much to hope that the people will begin to see
through the fatal attraction of Big Government before it
proves fatal to them.
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.1 like to read accounts of good management and efficient
cooperation. We live on and by and through business op-
There is a reduction in the force, for a time, but in a few j erations. Not all are industrialists and certainly most of us
' operate on a modest scale. Some are newspaper men—and
years the old story of progress is repeated.
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All of Us Have a Stake in
the Resources of
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Joan Maxcy, holding Wildlifo Conservation booklet and Waties
Pope, pointing at pictures, are two pupils who helped
a unit on soil and water conservation. i
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TODAY, TOWN PEOPLE, $nd especially those who live in towns sup
ported by rural areas, realize that they have a tremendous stake in how
our land is used. The land is the source of a very large share' of our
basic wealth. Not only food and clothing, but a large part of the raw ma
terials for our industries come from the soil. All of ps, whether we are
manufacturers, bankers, storekeepers, doctors, teachers, or ministers, are
directly concerned with what happens to the land. We are affected, bas
ically, as consumers of food, anl our income likewise may be determined
by the kind and size of crops produced. So, the importance of productive
land in our economy hardly can be over-emphasized.
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The South Carolina National
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JOJHN T. NORRIS, MANAGER
JOSEPH L. KEITT, Assistant Manager
LEWIS SHEALY, Assistant Manager
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