Page 4 EDITORIAL Dallas Borough Council’s decision could not have been clearer: Contractor Raymon R. Hedden was to discontinue work on his four-family apartment on Pramba Avenue until he had obtained a building permit. No building permit had been issued for the structure because multiple apartments are pro- hibited in Dallas Borough’s residential districts. Mr. Hedden’s petition for an exception to the zoning code—and hence for a building permit—is current- ly under consideration by council and is slated for a hearing Nov. 8. . Meanwhile, work on the building is expressly for- bidden. : Apparently, however, Mr. Hedden does not think his actions are governable by Dallas Borough Council. On four separate occasions since construc- tion on the project was halted, Dallas Borough Police Chief Raymond Titus has discovered work- men at the site carrying on as though no stop-order had ever been issued. On Tuesday morning, the chief was treated to the spectacle of a workman fleeing through the woods in the hope of avoiding detection. At the last borough council meeting Mr. Hedden’s attorney earnestly expressed his client’s concern that no one think he was ‘‘attempting to act in de- fiance of council’s wishes.’’ Defiance: It would be difficult to think of a better word to describe the arrogant manner in which Mr. Hedden has ignored council’s directive and blithely What you do, Mr. Hedden, speaks so loudly we can’t hear what you say. Robert Casey Before the Shapp Administration took office nearly two years ago, there were two government offices that most Pennsylvanians had never heard of, or if they had, they were probably at a loss to say who held them and what duties these offices performed. Since that time, however, it has been almost impossible to pick up a newspaper in the state without running across the name of either Herbert Denenberg or Robert Casey, Pennsyl- vania’s highly visible insurance commissioner and auditor general respectively. It is often said, not entirely in jest, that these two men are better known than the governor himself. Certainly they seem to be more popular. The difference between these two men is that Mr. Denenberg was appointed by the governor, while Robert Casey was not. And although he, like Mr. Shapp, is a Democrat, Robert Casey has not hesita- ted to be a frequent thorn in our governor’s side. It was Robert Casey, after all, that forced Gov. Shapp to sell his brand new airplane. We don’t know that Robert Casey has been the best auditor general that Pennsylvania has ever had, but we wouldn’t hesitate to bet that he has been one of the best. At a time when our state government has been badly in need of economic caution, Robert Casey has not hesitated to scream loud and long about Harrisburg’s bureaucratic ex- cesses. Like many other regulatory positions, the main too close to the men supposedly being wat- ched with the result that the office has failed to carry out its perscribed duties. Robert Casey rep- resents a refreshing exception to this tradition. While at times we have felt that a particular Casey crusade has been petty and tainted by polit- ical overtones, there can be no doubt that our auditor general is doing his job and doing it well. In fact, Robert Casey’s voice has been downright re- freshing coming from a city where screams of im- pending bankruptcy can be followed so closely by the righteous defense of legislative pay raises and other such governmental excesses. Although Mr. Casey’s opponent, Franklin Mec- Corkel, has tried to portray the auditor general as a Shapp croney, the record says the opposite. We hope to hear more from Robert Casey in the future, for he has proven to be a man of independent judge- ment and integrity, and there are too few men of his type to be found in government today. We hope Mr. Casey is reelected. § Changes One morning Frederick woke up green. His skin was a pale apple green, his eyes emerald. His hair resembled close cropped grass. He stood for a long time in front of his bedroom mirror staring at the face he'd al- ways, secretly, been so proud of—a person- able, executive model face, not yet forty years old; a face that was accumulating the respect of the community faster than wrinkles; a face like his friend's faces only just 4 bit better: an excellent face, but green now with green stubble sprouting from the handsome chin. “Oh dear,” moaned his wife, ‘‘what will the neighbors say?” “Maybe its just an allergy,’ Frederick mused, ‘‘or a new kind of bug . . . a mutated virus like I was reading about in Time last week.” But the best doctors money could afford agreed that it was not an allergy or a virus or any other malady known to medical science. “Terminal greeness’’ thought Frederick grimly. And why had it happened to Frederick Smith, a promising junior vice president who wouldn’t have been caught dead at the office in a green shirt; a man who would spring at the television set to switch off a report on campus unrest, exclaining, “Well I'm as openminded as the next fellow, but one thing’s sure, if we had any children, no son of mine would have hair over his ears or any- place else it doesn’t belong! Frederick was a firm believer in ‘‘drawing the line some- where.” Preferably somewhere within the boundaries of his own sensibilities. All in all, it was an exceedingly cruel fate he suffered. In a fit of indignation and self pity he threw his ‘Nixon for President” button down the garbage disposal unit. Who ever heard of a green republican? The shades came down in the Smith house. Frederick took up existence in a murky twilight that bleached the color out of everything but the TV set. “This will pass,” he reasoned, “because it has to.” He made a large donation to the local TRB from Washington emer rm How can we describe the mood of Wash- ington today so that a wondering reader, 40 years hence, say, can get some feel of the be- wildering atmosphere? Three themes, we think, run through the mood, constantly min- gling and separating: a feeling that Mr. Nixon is rolling toward a landslide victory of possibly historic proportions; a feeling that seeps out of the White House and out from its aloof and introverted occupant--a feeling of persecution despite the expected victory, dir- ected against the press, intellectuals, “opinion leaders” and opponents generally; and finally a gathering feeling of concern as the details of the GOP Watergate sabotage- espionage affair leak out, bit by bit, with the knowledge that civil and criminal cases will come to trial right after the election, that Ted Kennedy, with subpoena powers, will be in- vestigating right after the election and that, in general, what looks like one of the sleaziest episodes in the history of national politics will begin to be spread out for months, maybe years, right after the election. The strange mood in Washington hasn’t got out to the country yet and very likely won’t (till after the election). Twenty-nine times at one briefing reporters tried to get comment on the sabotage affair from White House press secretary Ziegler: no luck. At another time Clark MacGregor, chairman of the re-election effort, denounced the sabotage charges and stalked from the room without answering questions. It almost passes belief that John Mitchell and Maurice Stans did not know what was going on in the GOP depart- ment of dirty tricks they were financing, and J THE DALLAS POST, OCT. 26, 1972 church and instructed his wife to keep the flag flying beside the front porch at all times. If no time for the salvation of green people then maybe Frederick’s own favorite diety, Uncle Sam, God of the Right and Good, would take pity on one of his devout worshippers gone unwillingly astray. Frederick's hue remained constant. The office took to calling every morning. At last Frederick had no choice. He placed his brown hat on top of his green, but neatly combed hair and faced the door- way. His wife looked on, horrified, her mind reeling with visions of a green man intruding, shockingly on the placid, sleepy rhythms of Sofine Acres. “How foolish I've been,” said Frederick. “My friends at the office won't hold my unfor- tunate condition against me. Why just a few years back old Mr. Swepson was in a traffic accident and until he retired he came to work in a wheel chair. Certainly, being green is no worse than being paralyzed. “Haven't I often said, ‘my fellow workers are the very best of people, the kind of fine people who make you proud to live in such a great country.” Frederick's boss took one look at him and employ eccentrics.” Frederick was stunned, but there was no He went to his desk to gather up the few personal items he kept there. Only now did he realize that he'd been moving in a fog all morning. He couldn't remember driving to work, or entering the office, or confronting the boss. One moment he’d been trembling at the threshold of his darkened home, babbling stupidly to his wife, then, abruptly, Mr. Sliker’s curt dismissal had brought reality crashing down on him. “I must have hypnotized myself,’ he muttered, without conviction, trying to suppress the horrible idea that this strange $ spell might be another symptom of hit disease. ih Now that Frederick was awake an od feeling came over him. Its first manifestation was a vague uneasiness that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Then he realized what it was. He felt out of place. The softlights; the thick carpets, the long desks with . name- plates and glossy black telephones, the muted polyphonic clatter of typewriters drifting in from the offices down the hall, all the 'sensa- tions he'd once loved as a soaring bird loves the air under its wings, now disturbed him. As he riffled through his desk drawers he caught glimpses of his own, incongrous green hand. He sighed. This office had been his world. It was only here, in this orderly place, busy but subdued, safe among his own kind of people, that he could function. If he didn’t belong here any more, where did he belong? On his way to the door, Frederick realized that none of his friends had spoken to him. He'd not gotten so much as a ‘‘how've ya been?’’ Everyone seemed too busy to: even meet his gaze but when he anne ay he al- most thought that he could feel them ‘staring SW 1 in his direction. “My absence must have set the whole office back,” thought Frederick. ‘They're trying to catch up now and simply can’t take time out to talk. That’s understandable. I'd act the same way, I guess...” His thoughts running in this confused vein, he stumbled into his old friend Harry Johnson. Harry stepped away quickly, as if Frederick had a deadly communicable disease. ‘‘Harry, I haven't seen you for. . .” “Ah. .Fred.. . hey, I'm sorr:#§hout . . . er. ummm... Harry’s smile was a grimace. He backed off down the hall. ; Frederick frowned, totally perplexed. What was the matter with him? He was the one who had changed so grotesquely, why was it the world that looked different? (To be continued. . .) how a web of evidence begins to associate the White House staff with the operation. It is an extraordinary prospect-a big political vic- tory immediately ahead, straightway tum- bling into post-election exposure; a candidate likely to get a landslide facing continuing em- barrassment after the campaign; a man, in- cidentally, who still isn’t very popular, It could tarnish the luster of a second term. Mr. Nixon must sense victory yet he vividly displayed a feeling of persecution last week when he told the news of POWS that “‘opinion leaders’’ let him down in May when he decided to mine harbors and increase bombing. One felt uncomfortable watching his emotional speech; it somehow recalled that time in California a decade ago, when he told the press ‘‘you won’t have Nixon to kick around any more.” “It is often said,” he explained, ‘‘that when a President makes a hard decision, the so-called opinion leaders of this country can be counted to stand beside him, regardless of party.” He said he meant ‘‘the leaders of the media, the great editors and publishers and television commentators...the presidents of our universities and the professors and the rest, those who have educational back- ground....” fr Well, they didn’t crash through, the Pre- sident complained. He was brave about it, though, and even noble; and he made a little joke at the way he was misunderstood and let down. But you had a feeling all the time that he had been brooding about it; yes, even be- fore his great victory vindication. What is America’s mood today? Well, Thissa 'n Thatta Secrecy is something to think about. According to our daily reading matter, the newspapers are in a constant ferment about government's failure to make instantly . known just about everything that theoreti- | cally does not affect national security (although interpretation of ‘national se- curity’’ varies considerably). On the other hand, newspapers are also shoulder to shoulder when the government wants to know where and from whom certain information appearing as news in their columns emanated. In short, the newspapers want it both ways-they want access to practically all government secrets, but don’t want the government to know anything about their own. As a newspaper man I suppose that I should not notice this inconsistency and should rally around fellows who go to jail rather than re- veal their sources. I know quite well from ex- perience that if, as a reporter, I tell just who gave me the facts for a news story and what were the surrounding circumstances, I will get no more information from that source; consequently, there is need for secrecy and I state that I would rather go to jail than tell. . But there are two sides to it and if I, as a re- porter, know about a criminal act and have written about it, and won’t help the officials, I am doing nothing for the sanctity of our laws. I have a duty to uphold these laws which I am shirking. I have also been up against government secrecy when the public, through the press, has every right to information that has been denied with little or no explanation and no comprehensible reason than an ingrained taste for working in secrecy. Very often infor- mation is withheld as a result of personal dis- like for the reporter or even as a reprisal for turn to the Monthly Investment Letter of Harris, Upham & Co., the nation’s 15th lar- gest Wall Street brokerage, written by Lewis Stone, vice president for economics. ‘People as a whole,” he explains to clients in the Oct- ober issue, ‘don’t care about the broad social issues, or even specific scandals such as the Watergate incident, or the campaign contri- butions, or the Russian wheat and soybean sales, or the undoubted corruption that is in- herent in the American political system.” The people don’t care, Stone says. ‘If we may paraphrase a relatively new saying-- ‘corruption is as American as apple pie’.”’ Stone says he is ‘continually amazed at the intellectual liberals’ blind faith in the quality of the people’s culture.” Apparantly he is talking about the same people whom Nixon calls ‘‘opinion leaders.” The article continues: “We do not live in a highly educa- ted society,”’ the majority of college gradua- tes “‘haven’t read a book since they left Old Ivy.” What do they do? Well this is the picture leisure time is spent in love-making, home- making, golf, tennis, and spectator sports, the bottle, and cutting the lawn....It is a far cry from the socialist academic despair to the inspired hopefulness of the enlightened busi- ness community.”’ So that’s the word on Watergate: ‘Corruption is as American as apple pie.” ; We hope it isn’t so. We don’t think it is so. contrary from another quarter. Once every 10 years the United States takes a self-portrait, paper, even when the reporter is in good standing with the public official who is sitting on the information. Then we have the garbage-sifting colum- nists like Jack Anderson, who gain more or less accurate information of a sensational nature by shady methods such as having spies go through corporate waste baskets, by what can only be threats and bribery and by god only knows what other methods-and who shout to the high heavens about the govern- ment when it tries to keep tab on potential threats to the public peace by maintaining a secret file on suspected characters. Digging up the dirt is O.K. for Anderson et al., but wrong for the government agencies charged with protecting the U.S.A. from external and internal enemies. Again an inconsistency, but not one which I could possibly defend. A re- porter keeping his mouth shut and going to jail, I can admire and emulate, even if I know it to be an inconsistent attitude. This differ- ence is a matter of honor which I can follow, but not explain. ‘But of all inconsistencies, the most dif- ficult for me to understand are the incon- sistencies noted in our courts of law. Not long ago, I read about a man who was appre- hended with two suitcases full of dangerous and illegal drugs and who was freed (I sup- pose with his suitcases) by a judge because his right to privacy had been invaded. The cop who made the arrest had neglected to get a search warrant to enter the drug dealer’s automobile! The man’s apparent and undis- puted guilt was not, in the eyes of the court, as important as the fact that the man was ille- gally caught. Maybe I have no respect for the majesty of the law, but I still think the estab- the circumstances of the capture. Another matter that has always offended my sense of reasoning is the imposition of concurrent sentences because a man sen- tenced concurrently to two or three terms is really sentenced to the longest of the terms, and the rest of it is pure waste and nonsense. However, I an trending away from my sub- ject, which I sort of planned to be secrecy in general and just how much of it should be tol- erated by the law (the same law I have just been writing about and questioning). Frank- ly,-I do not know the answer, although I will give it a try. I would say that, in general, the less secrecy the better, particularly when dis- closure would work no harm to anybody at all. Unfortunately, there isn’t much secrecy of this sort and most secrecy, official and other- wise, is practiced because of a belief that it keeps somebody out of trouble. This generally is the person who imposes secrecy, such as a small town police chief, who is afraid of cri- ticism if crime reports are made public, or a its census, and just the other day the basic tabulated findings of the 1970 enumeration came out, the major social document of America. This shows a mighty nation with many faults, of wildly unfair income distribu- tion and of continuing injustice to blacks and minority groups but, in the sense of its contin- uity decade by decade and genergg=n by gen- eration, it offers many grounds w¥r hope. Take one statistic of education. Half a century ago the average adult had only a grammar: school education. A quarter of a century ago the TV networks programmed their shows at a ‘‘ninth-grade mentality.” Here is how the number of school os for median adults has risen: 1940--8.6 yeays; 1950- 9.3 years; 1960--10.5 years. And now the latest; it has risen to 12.1 years and it means for the first time in history the average Amer- ican adult is a high school graduate. There is no country in the world that has achieved anything like this. Scoff at education if you want, but we don’t know of any capital invest- ment that is superior to it in the long run; it's better than motor cars, better than sky- scrapers. Maybe in time it will improve pol- itics. La Note: Interviewed over Mutual Radio station WHN (New York), Richard Nixon (October 8, 1963) charged that the US will be ‘harming the cause of freedom? if it sells wheat to Soviet Russia: ‘‘why should we pull them out of their trouble and make Communism look better?’ he demanded. He denounced a re- port that President Kennedy would approve the sale of four million tons to Moscow. . borough councilman who is afraid to take a stand on anything because it might lase him some popularity and therefore reseg®ks his utterances for a secret meeting of council where he can safely deny having said any- thing offensive to anybody. Such secrecy is the mark of small, cowardly men and should be circumvented by such laws as protect the right of the public to know what is going on in government. After all, the public provides the money that pays these political lightweights and has a perfect right to know what goes on. This information must come from the newspapers since it is impossible for everyone to be present at meetings and interviews with officials. Therefore, all such laws and their implement- ation should generally be upheld and, if not working well, should be added to or enforced. But the newspapers shouldn’t have it both ways. If a paper has knowledge of public crimes and doesn’t want to public the source, it should be ready to pay the cost in a jail term without crying about it. Editor emeritus: Mrs. T.M.B. Hicks Editor: Doris R. Mallin News editor: Shawn Murphy eeman, vice
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers