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Page 4
EDITORIAL
Solid Waste
Hopeful for ecologists,
mentalists, and all other Americans concerned
with related problems was in the news last week
from St. Louis Mo. An experiment involving the use
of solid waste as supplementary fuel in conven-
tional utility boilers is being conducted in that city.
In addition to reducing cost of disposing of solid
wastes, the test is expected to lower cost of power
production and reduce air pollution. And, of course,
if this system can be used in power plants
throughout the country, it should reduce greatly the
tremendous need we have at present for landfills.
The $333,000,000 experiment in St. Louis is
reported as a cooperative venture with the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, the city of St.
Louis and its local electric power company. It is
financed with a $220,000,000 grant from the federal
agency, matched by local funds in the Missouri
city.
Granted, this is a sizeable amount of money to
spend on an experiment—and taxpayers in all 50
states are helping to pay for the project in that
‘midwestern city. However, if it does prove to be a
feasible means of producing power, we will all
benefit.
~ Using a new formula, boilers at the electric
generating plant, burn nearly 300 tons each day of
processed refuse, resembling colorless, ordorless
confetti. The shredded trash is combined with
pulverized coal and produces power. Twelve tons of
refuse is used with 54 tons of coal.
The processing of refuse, termed a simple one by
officials, has refuse trucks dump their loads onto a
concrete floor and two tractors push trash onto a
conveyor belt to a hammer mill where refuse is
shredded; another conveyor belt transports milled
waste to a storage bin where metal scraps are
magnetically separated and removed. Large
trucks carry about 25 tons each of the shredded
solid waste from the processing center to the power
plant.
news environ-
watch. Should it prove as auspicious as it promises,
it can be of great value to our country—with its
rapidly diminishing supply of natural resources.
Milk Prices
Louden Hill will obviously receive the praise of
regional consumer advocates in lowering its retail
milk prices, and just as obviously will set off a furor
in Harrisburg over its flouting the orders of the
Pennsylvania Milk Marketing Board. But the issue
does not stop there.
Gov. Shapp’s administration has long ad-
‘vocated that retail milk price controls should be
abolished, but this would require either a new Milk
Marketing Law or the amending of the current 1937
statute. Such a move would have to be realized
through action on the part of the slow-moving
Pennsylvania General Assembly.
- 'Last month, for example, the governor nau
prepared a draft legislative bill which would
protecting the farmer, and assure that no con-
sumer outlet could use milk as a loss leader. In fact
a clause in the draft bill would require the retailer
to sell milk at no lower a price than would be
profit above cost.
: A few members of the legislature, however, all
Democrats, have opposed the governor’s proposal,
thus acting to help pad the pockets of the giant
supermarket chains and dairy middlemen to the
detriment of consumers.
The matter of milk prices has been battered
remains far from resolution because of the political
influence of the giant chain stores. The issue should
be clear enough, what with lower prices in every
Furthermore, Pennsylvania
milk is being processed and transported to most of
those states and sold at a lower price than it is in
the Commonwealth.
Consumers are becoming a political force to be
reckoned with not only in the general assembly, but
also before the state agencies. And with a milk
hearing scheduled for this region next month,
citizens should join Louden Hill in a strong voice to
see that milk prices at every outlet become just and
~
Changes
By Eric Mayer
Ray Andrews was trudging along behind
his power mower, enveloped in the cloud of
noise’ that hovered around it, hypnotized by
the vibrations pulsing up into his hands and
the sheer boredom of pacing back and forth
across a lawn in which every fierce dandelion
and each spreading patch of crabgrass was
only too familiar, when, without warning, a
cat sauntered across his path. It was one of
the cats that lived next door with old Miss
Samuels.
Seeing that a collision was imminent, he
swerved the mower. That was a mistake.
Past experience should have taught him that
sophisticated and delicate modern
mechanisms like power mowers are built to
be handled with the utmost care. This un-
warranted violence exerted an unforeseen
strain on the left rear tire which promptly
snapped off and went whirling past Ray’s ear
with an indignant whistle to land, in a puff of
geranium petals, in the flower bed.
The crippled mower skidded to a halt and
sat sullenly in the middle of the front yard as
if to say, ‘Now see what you’ve done!” The
lawn had been divided neatly in half. Toward
the house the grass was even and closely
cropped but toward the street it grew tall,
lush and chaotically with a wild and ragged
look. The mower was stopped precisely on the
border of these two opposing realms.
The testy machine had only that morning
returned from a two-weeks stay at the repair
shop where, hopefully, the motor had been
cured “of its propensity for falling off.
Disgusted, Ray fished the tire out of the
flower bed. The plastic center had broken,
freeing the tire from its axle.
Ray went into his kitchen, through a
creaking screen door that he had to pull tight
behind him, reluctant as it was to shut itself.
The refrigerator light had been out for
months and the refrigerator’s interior was a
dark, dank cavern where mouldering cheeses
and shadowy vegetables lurked behind
stalagmites of cans and wax cartons. Groping
blindly he found a bottle of beer. The twist-off
A Nixon-McGovern contest, if it comes to
that, will be one of the most incongruous in
American history. Few men could be more
unalike. Mr. Nixon is watchful and remote,
McGovern direct and open. The former
distrusts youth; the latter relies on it. They do
not see things alike at all. For the president
national honor is continuing in Vietnam; for
the senator it is getting out. Essentially the
president. wants to bolster the American
status quo while the senator wants to give it a
big shake. | }
Mr. Nixon, we think, deserves well of
America, uncomfortable though we find that
somebody had to break the ice with Peking
and with Moscow and Mr. Nixon did it, and
also started direct negotiation on arms cuts.
It is a splendid service, we think, and it took a
lifelong professional Communist-hater like
Mr. Nixon to do it. The screams coming from
some of the ‘‘betrayed’”’ right-wing
organizations indicate the problem. What a
tizzy they would have been in if Hubert
Humphrey had been elected in 1968 and tried
to go to Moscow! And who would have led the
denunciation? Why, presumably, Richard
Nixon. Since the task had to be done he has
been the right man, in many ways, to do it.
So now will an ungrateful nation reject Mr.
Nixon for a second term? It will be a
fascinating’ campaign to watch, particularly
if George McGovern, the minister’s son from
South Dakota and bomber pilot, World War I,
with Distinguished Flying Service Cross, is
the Democratic nominee. The press is having
cap had been put on crooked and refused to
twist. Ray forced it with a can opener, cutting
his thumb during the struggle.
In the back yard he stretched out in his
lawnchair, in the shade, and brooded. His
comfortable Elm Street home was replete
with conveniences—washing machine, dryer,
refrigerator, television, radios, record player
... Some nights, sitting in his dim livingroom,
he could feel their uncanny presence in the
surrounding rooms, could almost hear the
electric life humming through wire arteries
under tough metal skins. The dread con-
traptions lurked, silent and watchful in every
corner, waiting to breakdown, or worse. A
human interest story in the Country Courier
had told of a man being electrocuted by his
toaster. )
Ray was a prisoner in his own home, his
appliances his jailors. He was at the mercy of
the gadgets. Was the TV watching him even
as he watched it, preparing to blow a tube
during a crucial moment of an important
game? What about the alarm clock that sat
beside his bed, peering at him through the
depths of the night with an inscrutable
phosphorescent gaze? What plans had it for
him? Would it fail to ring some morning,
allowing him to sleep through, and lose the
promotion he’d been expecting? And then
there was the gas furnace that sat all but
forgotten in a cellar corner, capable of either
mischief or massive destruction. He
remembered his car. He wondered if it
grudgingly carried him to work each morning
only so he could go on feeding it gas and
tending to its numerous complaints.
While following this dreary and well
trodden path of thought, Ray fell asleep. He
dreamed he was bending over his mower,
pulling urgently on the starter cord. His arm
felt unspeakably weary as if he'd been
tugging without success for hours. The grass
under his feet was making an odd gurgling
sound. It began to grow with unnatural
rapidity, reaching out green tendrils that
curled around his legs, slithered up toward
his arms. He knew that the mower was his
ce § ry
A -
EX
by J.R. Freeman
We're in trouble again.
At the Stockholm meeting of the United
Nations environmental conference last week,
the United States delegation headed by
Russell Train, chairman of the President’s
Council on Environmental Quality, caught a
barage of blistering remarks from Swedish
Premier Olof Palme, over the ecological
warfare we have been conducting in South-
east Asia.
' In prepared remarks delivered before the
U.N. assemblage, the premier said “The
immense destruction brought about by in-
discriminate bombing, by large-scale use of
bulldozers and herbicides is an outrage some-
times described as ecocide, which requires
urgent international attention. It is shocking
that only preliminary discussions of this
matter have been possible so far in the United
Nations.”
But the premier had nothing to add that
hasn’t already been said in this country.
Though the U.S. State Department will
probably consider cutting off all economic aid
to Sweden: because of the remarks, some
home-bound critics of the Vietnam conflict
have been concerned about. the environ-
mental life in Vietnam for a long time.
Most notable, perhaps, have been the
remarks of Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis.) who
recently addressed the problem from the
floor of the Seante. His remarks not only
make for interesting thought, but may prove
in the end to cost U.S. taxpayers millions.
They follow, reprinted from the
Congressional Record.
Mr. President, suppose we took gigantic
only chance. He yanked mightly and felt the
rope snap. Desperately he flailed out—then he
was being dragged down by the ravenous
lawn . . . A
Ray was walking through an immense
forest. On either side of him rose shadowy
walls of foliage that curved inward to'1%eet in
a leafy ceiling far over head. Occasional
beams of sunlight filtered down to the path.
Just as Ray was wondering where he was, a
masked man, dressed entirely in black and
weilding a huge black sword, stepped out of
the trees.
“Where be ye headed?’’ the masked man
inquired, in a voice that sounded suspiciously
like that of Fred, the lawnmower repairman.
Ray surprised himself by answering quite
readily, “I'm questing after that mythical
treasure—the lawnmower that works.”
He winced as the flat edge of the masked
man’s heavy sword came down on his head.
When he awoke he searched through his chain
mail, finding no trace of his wallet. At that
moment the path before him was lit #f#ith an
eerie golden light. Scrambling to his teet he
saw, sitting majestically on a great marble
pedestal, an old-fashioned hand mower.
But even as he stood in awe before this
wondrous machine the forest was filled with a
terrifying, electric cacophony and a grim host
of metal monstrosities, their long cords
trailing off into the darkness beyond the path,
surrounded him. For a moment they stood
there, buzzing fiendishly, then they were upon
him. He was helpless to stem the tide.
Something that looked like a flying toaster
had sunk its steel teeth into his hand=7fe felt
himself grabbed from behind, feltiWibidery
plastic arms closing around him . . .
Ray awoke to find himself trapped in the
lawn chair which had collapsed around him
as he tossed in fitful sleep. One of Miss
Samuels’ cats was sitting in the grass a few
feet away, studying his predicament. From
his awkward position he looked dolefully at
the cat and the cat looked back at him. Ray
blinked.
a love affair with McGovern momentarily,
but we don‘t think it will last; it is trying to
make amends for having underrated the
senator for so long. Also it’s taking advantage
of having a fresh face and a new personality
to exploit.
Actually, in many ways, McGovern is an
accidental candidate. He doesn’t fit into the
normal pattern. The normal candidate is the
compromiser who can assume the bland,
middle position required under the two-party
system where each of the rival coalitions
jockeys for the vital center. The system
always irritates ideologues and idealists. Why
can’t we divide sharply between con-
servatives and liberals and fight it out? they
demand. Well, Barry Goldwater tried that out
on the conservative side, and see what hap-
pened to him. The two-party system blunts
ideological frenzy, or that is the theory,
anyway. The “normal” candidate, under the
system, would have been Edmund Muskie
and he seemed to have the nomination in hand
‘till he blew it, that snowy day in New
Hampshire. The primary system is often
ridiculed; it is a cruel business; it is an ordeal
by publicity, but it winnows people out. It
eliminated George Romney in 1968, and it
pretty much eliminated Muskie this year.
Curiously enough the calm, low-keyed,
decent-looking McGovern survived.
McGovern has one big asset: he doesn’t
look like a run-of-the-mine politician or like
any other politician you ever saw before. You
may not agree with him but you feel that he is
sincere, which he is. Whether this is a lasting
asset for a candidate remains to be seen. He is
not very eloquent; his delivery is rather dry.
He does have a sense of moral outrage. He
has taken positions on a lot of matters which
are probably impolitic, that the federal
government should not get involved in the
abortion issue, that penalties for marijuana
are often too harsh, that after the war there
should be an amnesty for draft resisters.
Former attorney general John Mitchell, who
hands gloatingly. What a chance this will be
John Connally if Mr. Nixon makes the switch.
But the big things that anger McGovern
aren’t these but the failures, as he sees them,
of the American social order. Why is it that
the average man can’t seem to make his voice
heard in Washington? Why is welfare left, for
all the talk, in such an appalling mess?
McGovern has answers for these problems,
such things as a “minimum income grant”
which we are all probably going to be writing
about shortly. It amounts to wholesale reform
of the tax structure which would result in a
redistribution of income. Mr. McGovern
discusses these items so mildly and casually
that they do not seem radical. But make no
doubt of it, in the deeper meaning of the word,
they are.
The question--perhaps the basic question of
1972--is whether a tide is running; whether the
country has reached such a state of cynicism
about things as they are, and the rules of an
Establishment that it will take a bold step in a
new direction.
“Radical?” says McGovern disarmingly.
“Let me say I come from the state of South
Dakota where there are two-to-one
Republican odds against me. I have been
elected four times in that state. Ordinarily we
from South Dakota.”
Yes, he agrees mildly, the propos to cut
the defense budget, to end the Vietnam war,
toreduce the loopholes in the tax law and give
the middle class and the poor: a better deal,
“igrhile’ the ‘do’ represent a break with the
past, I think that is what the American people
want.” é
Does a man with these notions have a
chance of election against an entrenched
White House incumbent: Who knows? With
unemployment almost as high as ever, with
prices still rising, with 25 percent of plant
capacity unused, with a deep loathing for the
war, Mr. Nixon may have difficulties.
Another thing to remember is that nobody
really loves Mr. Nixon a whole lot; people
may admire him, and certainly the banking
and business interests are going to give him
the biggest campaign support ever if George
McGovern gets the nod, but in terms of
personal popularity whatever the opposite of
charisma is, Mr. Nixon has tons of it.
One thing more should be said. If George
McGovern is nominated and elected this will
be one of those rare critical” elections. They
come at infrequent intervals, about 28 or 36
years apart, and one is long overdue -- the last
was FDR in 1932. McGovern believes what he
says and his views mark a new direction. If
the public is in the mood to elect him #fimost
certainly means a political realignment.
bulldozers and scraped the land bare of trees
and bushes at the rate of 1,000 acres a day or
44-million square feet a day until we had
Rhode Island, 750,000 acres.
Suppose we flew huge planes over the land
and sprayed 100-million pounds of poisonous
destroyed an area of prime forests the size of
Massachusetts or 5% million acres.
Suppose we flew B-52 bombers over the land
dropping 500-pound bombs until we had
dropped almost 3 pounds per person for every
man, woman, and child on earth—8 billion
pounds—and created 23 million craters on the
land measuring 26 feet deep and 40 feet in
diameter.
Suppose the major objective of the bombing
is not enemy troops but rather a vague and
unsuccessful policy of harassment and
territorial denial called pattern or carpet
bombing.
Suppose the land destruction involves 80
percent of the timber forests and 10 percent
of all the cultivated land in the Nation.
We would consider such a result a monu-
done to our ally, South Vietnam.
While under heavy pressure the military
finally stopped the chemical defoliation war
and has substituted another massive war
against the land itself by a program of pattern
or carpet bombing and massive land clearing
with a huge machine called a Rome Plow.
The huge areas destroyed pockmarked,
scorched, and bulldozed resemble the moon
and are no longer productive.
I
This is the documented story from on-the-
spot studies and pictures done by two dis-
tinguished scientists, Prof. E. W. Pfeiffer and
Prof. Arthur H. Westing. These are the same
two distinguished scientists who made the
defoliation studies that alerted Congress and
the country to the grave implications of our
chemical warfare program in Vietnam,
which has now been terminated . . .
This is impersonal, automated, and
mechanistic warfare brought to its logical
conclusion—permanent, total destruction.
The tragedy of it all is that no one knows or
understands what is happening there, or why,
or to what end. We have simply unleashed a
gigantic machine which goes about its im-
personal business destroying whatever is
there without plan or purpose. The finger of
responsibility points everywhere but nowhere
in particular. Who designed this policy of war
against the land, and why? Nobody seems to
know and nobody rationally can defend it . .. .
»
If Congress knew and understood, we would
not appropriate the money.
If the President knew and understood, he
would stop it in 30 minutes.
If the people of America knew and under-
stood, they would remove from office those
responsible for it, if they could ever find out
who is responsible . . . .
The cold, hard, and cruel irony of it all is
that South Vietnam would have been better
off losing to Hanoi than winning with us. Now
she faces the worst of all possible worlds with
much of her land destroyed and her chances
of independent survival after we leave in
grave doubt at best. :
This has been a hard speech to give and
harder to write because I did not know hat to
say or how to say it—and I still do no#’xaow..
But I do know that when the Members of
doing there, neither they nor the people of this
Nation will sleep well that night.
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Editor emeritus: Mrs. T.M.B. Hicks
Editor: Doris R. Mallin
News editor: Shawn Murphy
Advertising: Carolyn Gass