"EDITORIAL
Remedies
Remember the old W.C. Fields line: “I went to
Philadelphia last night but it was closed?’’ Or the
time he said he wanted his epitaph to read: ‘On the
whole I'd rather be in Philadelphia.’
These and many of the other jokes and cracks
about Pennsylvania, and the city of Philadelphia in
‘particular, are largely the result of the state's
Sunday ‘blue laws.”
As of late in the Back Mountain area there has
been much talk and a great deal of controversy
over the observance of these dubious statutes.
Basically the main problem with the existing or-
dinances is that they are either not being enforced
at all or they are being enforced discriminately and
unfairly.
By now word has reached the ears of many a
Sunday shopper that one particular Back Mountain
business, the Unclaimed Freight Company, was
personally affected, and most recently fined, for
selling items in violation of the Common Law Penal
Code. Prior to that time, the Unclaimed Freight
store received a warning to desist Sunday retail
sales. It is worth mentioning that the establishment
seemed to become a marked target because their
Sunday patrons were taking all the parking spaces
in that vicinity.
On one hand, we can say that the problem was
‘legally’ solved “by the book.”” But from an ethical
viewpoint, there is more than just a hint of
something very unsettling about the nature of this
“settlement.”
If the disharmony centered about the
blue laws for a solution sounds like a shot-in-the-
dark means of remedy. The fact that it hit its mark
makes it even less acceptable. Laws, as protective
agents of all our rights, demand precision and
discernment.
If we begin to “‘coin’’ legal solutions for each new
case that becomes an issue without fully con-
sidering the technicalities behind the action, the
results are bound to become more than.a problem
of enforcement.
Mean Month
T.S. Eliot, the poet, was wrong. April is not the
cruelest month. February is. Several reasons for
that conclusion must be noted now that this blasted
month is upon us.
First off, take the name itself. The mind of man
has yet to determine just how February should be
pronounced. Is it Feb-brew-ary? Or is it Feb:bu-
ary? That mystery has endured almost as long as
the Great Pyramid and is a whole lot less satisfying
to speculate about.
February also comes right in the dead of winter.
There is even a quaint occasion to signal this:
Groundhog Day on February 2—which, in Penn-
sylvania, is made much of. The game is that if the
critter sees his shadow, winter will endure. But if
he doesn’t, a mild trailing off is in sight. As we see
the matter, all of this is a lot of responsibility to put
on a dumb animal, and the record shov s that
regardless of what he sees, the weather doesn’t
change. It’s awful; bleery mornings and leaden
evening skies. Those occasional sunny days don’t
bring the promise of spring but a painful reminder
that we’re only halfway there.
Three American presidents were born in
February—Abraham Lincoln, George Washington
and William Henry Harrison. There is some glow in
that. But the month brings another holiday,
Valentine’s Day, that’s a bother. No matter whom
youremember, there’s always someone you forget.
The seeds of this month’s nastiness can be traced
to its name. February comes from the Latin word
meaning to purify. The Romans purified them-
selves in February to prepare for the festivals
marking the new year. But Julius Caesar moved
the beginning of the year from March to January,
making February the second month. So there’s no
cause for purification. In some parts,'it’s not even
safe to peel off the long underwear.
About the only thing February has going for it is
thatit evens up the calendar by adding a day every
fourth year. But this year, it isn’t even doing that.
There is just no excuse for February..
: --Dottie Beckham
Thissa 'n Thatta
by H. H. Null, III
Whatever hidden intelligence planned
and created the world; for reasons not di-
vulged to any of us, saw fit to plan things so
that each thinking mortal was endowed with a
conviction that he or she was the holder of the
truth and everyone else could only approach
that truth in varying degree, according to how
close they came to total agreement. Whatever
the creator had in mind, the upshot has been a
series of conflicts that brought forth news-
papers, daily evidence of the fact.
Mostly in fun, I have written that there
are two points of view: mine and the wrong
one; but I have a hunch that just about every-
one else has the same philosophy, whether or
not they admit it. Newspapers are only a
method of making a living by recording this
at profitable intervals.
Probably the key is self interest and the
reason for it seems to be the development of a
fighting interest in survival, through the evol-
utionary process. The abstract truth is just
another thing to be ignored.
I could use just about any newspaper to
advance my thesis, but I will choose today’s
because it is at hand and fresh in my mind.
For instance: The U.S. Senate, which is
controlled by Democrats, wants to investi-
gate the bugging of Democratic Headquar-
ters by Republican gumshoes, but doesn’t
want Democratic bugging of Republicans
looked into.
One would think that if it is the right thing
to do to investigate Republican skullduggery,
it would be only fair to investigate Demo-
cratic skullduggery, but not so. Plainly the
reasoning of the Democrats is that the Repub-
licans might find something and what they
find might injure Democratic chances in
some future election, so it must be prevented,
if possible.
- And these people of both parties are sin-
cere in'their reaction. In their minds, they are
simply coming up with an answer to a pro-
blem, which threatens, so answering a pro-
blem must be right. A sense of fairness only
comes into play when it involves no problems.
No problems for the thinker, that is. If it in-
good. It is possible to look at their problems
with complete fairness.
Then, on the same front page, we have an
item relating that two Democratic senators,
dick) ‘and Thomas J. McIntyre, of New
Hampshire (whoever he is) came forth with a
statement that the fuel shortage exists be-
cause the major oil companies allowed home
TRB
from Washington
change if President Nixon can permanently
win over organized labor to his coalition, as
he has large parts of the South through his
Southern Strategy. We shall know more about
it after this week for the top brass of the AFL-
CIO is meeting for a fortnight at the swank
Americana Hotel at Bal Harbour, Florida.
George Meany and about 35 of the executive
council will be on hand and Mr. Nixon is
sending down cabinet spokesmen including,
of course, the colorful new secretary of
Labor, Pat Brennan and George Shultz and
others. He may pop in himself as he did to the
Teamsters’ convention in Florida in mid-1971
when he was staying at nearby Key:
Biscayne.
Mr. Nixon’s wooing of labor is one of the
most breath-taking political romances of
modern times. Off hand, it would seem like a
union of opposites but this isn’t necessarily
so; Disraeli--to whom Mr. Nixon likes to
compare himself--found that a lot of two-
fisted English workers loved his jingoistic
imperial adventures and, in the same way,
Mr. Nixon attracted Pat Brennan, head of the
New York Building Trades Council. The latter
got fame by bringing out his construction
stration for the Vietnam war that put ‘“har-
dhat”’ into the vocabulary, and roughed up a
lot of those effete long-haired peaceniks. The
delighted President invited Pat to the White
House and later made him secretary of
Labor. The country isn’t aware of Brennan
yet, but it will be. Most of the Nixon cabinet
crowd are drab, faceless men but Brennan,
the Bronx painter, has color enough for three.
| Guest Editorial
Politics Changing, ;
(from the Bedford Gazette)
We can remember the day when candidates
in these old hills didn’t have positions. It was
“me’’ against “him” and the prevailing
political advice was, “If the fish didn’t open
his mouth he wouldn’t get caught.”
A'letter from a young voter opens this issue,
and it deserves a fuller response. Why don’t
the candidates speak more to the issues? Why
can’t the voter make an intelligent choice?
The obvious answer is practical politics.
The name of the game is to get elected. If it
becomes necessary to prepare yourself, and
explain yourself, to get elected, then they’ll do
it.
We have seen candidates--and very suc-
cessful ones--do no more than place a few
perfunctory ads in the papers, send out a man
to tack up a few posters, and go around
shaking hands. Behind the scenes, there is
maneuvering, money is passed, workers lined
There is evidence that it won’t work as well
now. Yet old habits break hard, and some
federal approval for price increases. The
news story doesn’t say what the heads of the
oil companies think about this charge, al-
though I am sure they would not agree and it
doesn’t say what the ecology and environ-
ment freaks have to say about it, although the
truth would certainly involve them.
At least it does, according to my way of
thinking, and I feel that I have as much right
to put my oar in as the two senators, although
Ihave no axe to grind, or at least a very small
one—a regard for the truth. Still everybody
thinks they are right—me and the senators
and the oil company. The newspapers make a
profit from printing our opposing views.
Next we have a strike of the entire Penn
Central Railroad, which injured and incon-
venienced thousands of people. The reason for
it, according to union heads is that the offi-
cials of Penn Central have stated that they
are going to put into effect a court order
which allows them to cut away 6,000 jobs,
which they assert are not necessary. The re-
sult would be to cut the cost of operating the
bankrupt railroad by millions of dollars and
would be a step toward bringing it back to fin-
ancial health. So again we have a lot of differ-
ent opinions, all stemming from sincere
thinking. Company officers think it is impor-
tant to get the company out of bankrupcy,
union officers think it is important to keep the
men working whether or not it bankrupts the
company, inconveniences and imposes fin-
ancial losses on the customers, defies the
courts and damages the whole company. The
judge thought that he was being fair and
honest. What I think doesn’t much matter but
I favor putting the public and country first.
Then, shoved inside the paper, a horrible
catastrophe in Alameda, Calif., (a Navy jet
hit an apartment house and set it afire, killing
everyone within it), there is mention of
another strike, that of the Philadelphia school
teachers. This strike defies a court order to
return to educating Philadelphia’s children
and again I am sure that the union leaders
think it more important to gain their ends
EN
than it is to educate the city’s children, keep-
within the taxpayers’ means of paying them
and obeying the laws of the land. Again I am
sure that the school directors think that they
are doing right by opposing this and that the
judge thought himself right in feeling that the
majesty of the law is more ijfgortant that
whatever rights the strikers thra# they have.
My own thoughts, in case anyone is inter-
ested, are that teachers who defy our laws
should not be permitted to teach school at all,
because they cannot be expected to ground
their pupils in respect for the law or patrio-
tism. I feel they should be declared un-
employed and be given back their jobs only
when they come with some repentance on
their lips and some patriotism in their hearts.
And soit goes. Everybody thinks they are
right and were so created as the sparks fly
upward. Of course, everybody can’t be right
and so the so-called democratic process was
evolved—people are supposed to be governed
by the majority. I just wonder if a creator
wants it that way and arranges it differently.
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Al:Smith and thinks like Archie Bunker.
The affluent Brennan ‘craft unions are
celebrated for keeping out blacks and they
may feel at home in the administration as
does the white South. In the Brennan con-
firmation hearings it came out that one cute
way the steamfitters had of limiting un-
desirable apprentices was to give
examinations requiring them to identify, for
example, Salvador Dali, and to define what
words like ‘‘debutante’” mean; a good thing
for steamfitters to know. Actually, about 70
percent of the construction tradesmen enter
the industry through the backdoor, by routes
other than the formal five-year apprentice
system.
This discussion is not meant as an attack on
organized labor which has kept the flag of
progressivism afloat many and many a time
when it was abandoned by others. The
question is, however, whether George
Meany’s tacit alliance with Mr. Nixon in the
presidential election is for keeps. In 1972, for
the first time since the Roosevelt New Deal
‘coalition 40 years ago, large numbers of
unionists deserted the Democrats. Whereas
Humphrey got 56 percent support in 1968, the
Gallup poll showed Mr. Nixon got 50 percent
in 1972. Is this going to last? Can the President
make it worthwhile? Personally, we think it’s
doubtful but the President has many
allurements and knows how to use them.
Take the case of the teamsters. They are
the country’s biggest union, although not in
the AFL-CIO. Former president Jimmy Hoffa
was convicted in 1964 of tampering with a
jury, and of defrauding the union’s pension
Labor
fund’ of ‘nearly $2 million. He got a 13-year
sentence. Mr. Nixon commuted the sentence
in 1971 with the stipulation that he shouldn’t
engage in union activity for 17 years. A new
book by former FBI-man Walter Sheridan
who participated in the conviction The Fall
and Rise of Jimmy Hoffa) tells of the
tremendous teamster lobby to get Hoffa
sprung. The US Parole Board unanimously
rejected clemency three times in two years.
Then Mr. Nixon acted, without consultation
with the judges who sentenced Hoffa, the
prosecutors who convicted him, or the
criminal division of his own Justice Depart-
ment
A cordial White House-Teamsters
relationship developed before this. Mr. Nixon
helicoptered over to see Hoffa's successor,
Frank Fitzsimmons, inaugurated in Florida,
and reportedly offered him the labor post in
his cabinet before Brennan. Fitzsimmons was
the only labor member of the old Phase II Pay
Board who didn’t resign last March when
truculent Meany marched out. The in-
ternational brotherhood have all-out support
to the Nixon reelection, and, by a coincidence,
the White House withdrew proposed com-
pulsory - arbitration legislation aimed at
transportation disputes like those of the
teamsters just about the time of the Teamster
endorsement. A nice gesture. A sympathetic
president has a lot to offer.
As another labor case there is the minor but
interesting incident of the Seafarers In-
ternational Union, recently referred to in a
New York Times editorial. In 1970 the union
heads were charged amidst considerable
fanfare by Attorney General Mitchell with
candidates, even now, don’t really want to go
on the record with their views. We believe
that an increasing number of today’s voters--
and more pointedly, tomorrow’s voters--
appreciate candor in politics. The old game of
“political stumping’’ won’t work much
longer, if it works now. People know what
rhetoric means.
Issues themselves are sometimes elusive:
Seldom is there a definable issue which
separates men definitively. More often, the
gut issue is the accumulation of beliefs and
actions which makes up the man; yes, we're
saying the quality of the man is the central
issue in many races.
All possible candor--or probing and ex-
posure, if a man won’t volunteer his views~is
necessary to spotlight the essential dif-
ferences. The parties have an obligation, and
so do the candidates, to put themselves into
public. view. But they won’t accept that
obligation until the public demands it. The
present system is only an illusion. There is
very little real exposure. Rhetoric abounds.
It’s better than it used to be, but still far from
satisfactory. :
What must be done, to get at the purer
politics we’d like to see, is elimination of the
charge and counter-charge atmosphere.
When Bud Shuster says there is a 2 percent
element which degrades the process, he is
right. Both sides have it, and both should
eliminate it--but they haven't, partly because
the public tolerates it. People don’t like
smear, and innuendo, and they vote the op-
posite very often. That doesn’t stop the 2
percent from trying, and we have some real
experts around here. That’s the way some
illegally, conspiring to contribute, $750,000 to
phrey. The charges languished tWo years and
a Federal judge finally dismissed them for
failure to prosecute, and ‘gg Justice
Department decided not to appea¥. By one of
those amusing coincidences that are so much
stranger than fiction, the union borrowed
$100,000 from the Chemical Bank of New York
(whose chairman is on the Nixon finance
committee) five days before the election and
contributed the same amount to--guess who--
the Nixon campaign! The Nixon committee
ignored its legal obligation to make the gift
known within 48 hours and waited nearly
three months...
(Contemplating events like this you can’t
help wondering if the Watergate defendents
who have pleaded guilty but who have stayed
mum about who sponsored the affair, will
remain in jail for the full sentence, if and
when they go.)
Well, now we come back to I Meany,
who is as honorable and honest ase is testy.
We don’t always agree with him, but we
admire and like him. At Bal Harbour, Fla., he
will huff and puff, we imagine, about the new
Nixon thalidomide welfare budget (all its
offspring are mutilated programs). But he
will note, too, certain sops to labor. The wage
and price controls of Phase II are replaced
with the less restrictive Phase III, with which
Meany is cooperating. Then, too, a genuine
trade unionist is secretary of Labor. Above all
the administration hints at a tough action
against cheap foreign imports. McKinley
wooed workers with a high tariff; why
shouldn’t Nixon?
campaigns have been run for decades. You
never see it in the news, but nasty letters are
circulated, rumors started, back-room deals
made. : da
One of the messages of 1972. that the
people are disgusted with “‘politicians’’. Until
those who care about the political process get
it out of the mud and into the pure air of the
open forum, people will remain distrustful.
We see some steps in that direction, but we
are not encouraged by their lack of haste.
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president; and Doris Mallin, secretary-treasurer.
Mrs. T. M. B. Hicks, editor Emeritus
J. R. Freeman, managing editor
Doris R. Mallin, editor
Dan Koze, advertising. manager
Sylvia Cutler, advertising sales
°