Page 4 EDITORIAL Fire Prevention Week This is Fire Prevention Week. And the local com- munities are still fortunate enough to be served by fine volunteer units. As each Fire Prevention Week comes around, and as more and more communities are finding that they have to hire their fire departments, we can feel more and more grateful to have the groups of local men who voluntarily do such a fine job of protecting our property and homes. These men not only answer calls for assistance at all hours of the day, but attend classes so that such assistance can be the best and most up-to-date pos- sible. And they manage to do this with donations and with money they earn by giving us enjoyable, entertaining summer events, like auctions, horse shows, parades, and carnivals. The Dallas Fire and Ambulance Association is currently sending out their second request for donations. A few dollars to provide these men with the equipment and facilities they need to protect us will be well spent. Unfair Press There’s no doubt about it. The press has been un- fair when it comes to Vice President Spiro Agnew. Leaks of grand jury testimony concerning the role of Mr. Agnew in the Maryland contractor kick- back scandal should have remained secret, at least ‘until after a possible indictment. Those leaks to the press, and the subsequent publication of alleged criminal acts directed at the Vice President, has jeopardized the rights of Mr. Agnew as a citizen, notwithstanding the destruction of his political career. If the Maryland scandal was not enough for the Vice President to bear, it also came in the middle of Watergate. Mr. Agnew’s troubles, now at the feet of public scrutiny as well as before the courts, has damaged his political career irreparably because what use to be acceptable in Maryland politics, though illegal, is no longer thanks to Watergate. This leaves Mr. Agnew squarely in the Watergate trap. Tremendous pressure was brought to bear on Mr. Agnew when the Washington Post published a so- called leak that the Vice President would resign before the week’s end. That was three weeks ago, and Mr. Agnew has found himself saying almost daily that he is not resigning. The dilemma in which Mr. Agnew has found him- self will surely rest heavy on the bar of history. So confused has the Vice President become that at one moment he disavows the Constitution by subpoena- ing newsmen before a grand jury to reveal their confidential sources, at the next he is admonishing the judicial system by taking his case to Congress and the President, while he brandishes the charges againsthim as ‘‘damned lies.”’ The press is respon- sible for this continuing dilemma. | All of the witnesses and all of the evidence in the Maryland case were just as available in 1968 as they are now. History, meanwhile, will treat lightly the fact that the press was derelict in not serving up Mr. Agnew then as it is doing now. And this is where the press has been the most unfair of all. A responsible press would have given us Mr. Agnew’s Maryland scandal, if indeed there is one, when he was just a candidate. Capitol Notes by William Ecenbarger Since the salary of state legislators has risen by 70 percent within two years, some may wonder whether Pennsylvania tax- payers are getting anything in return for their generosity—involuntary though it may be. The answer is no. and it’s a stupid ques- tion- for it supposes that an institution like the Pennsylvania General Assembly, fat and inert after years of bad habits and loose living, can be transformed overnight into a streamlined model of industry and virtue. The legislature is seriously ill. It needs radical surgery, not aspirin. It is overweight, under-productive, inefficient and badly lack- ing fundamental guidelines for its own behavior. Three drastic steps could get the patient on the road to recovery: 1. A sharp reduction in the size of the legislature, cutting the 203-member House to 121 and the 50-member Senate to 30. 2. An absolute prohibition on outside employment and money-making activities, plus a requirement for full disclosure of legis- lators’ stocks, financial interests and other assets. 3. A substantial increase in legislative salaries, setting them at $30,000 with pro- vision for periodic cost-of-living increases and review by an impartial commission. Step 1 and step 2 are bitter pills for the lawmakers. but step 3 might be the spoonful of sugar to help that medicine go down. Conversely, a public that is skeptical about paying legislators the current $15,600 annual salary might be moved to open rebellion by the suggestion that the figure be nearly doubled. ) But such reluctance will degenerate rapidly into a sterile discussion of which came first, the chicken or the egg. Do we refuse to pay legislators more until we get a better legislature, or do we pay legislators more so we will get a better legislature? The realistic way is to tie the salary in- crease to reforms very likely to lead to a better legislature. A smaller legislature TRB from Washington by Richard Strout I think the American public is waiting for somebody to articulate for them their distaste and loathing for the Watergate Nixon-Agnew mess. Who will do it I don’t know. Last summer in an interview in The New Yorker Sen. Fritz Mondale (D-Minn.) told Elizabeth Drew. “What the president tried to do amounted to a massive, wholesale, un- constitutional dismantlement of our system, in an attempt to convert it into a presidential system.” I listened to Sen. Mondale on ‘Meet the Press” last week. He was low-keyed but boldly confident: ‘In a sense our whole government is under indictment at the top levels." he said; this is ‘‘the worst political scandal in American history.” Is there some reservoir of faith and courage on which America can draw at a moment like this? On an impulse I turned to Miracle at Philadelphia by Catherine Drinker Bowen, telling how they wrote the Constitution back there in 1787. They sat through the merciless August heat in that chamber of the State House looking out on Chestnut Street, with the tall wooden pumps on the corners. There was James Madison. ‘no bigger than half a piece of soap.” his friends said; they called him Jemmy. There was old Ben Franklin, who met guests under a mulberry tree, ‘‘a short, fat. hunched old man in a plain Quaker dress, bald pate and short white locks,” with an incessant vein of humor. There was obstinate, intransigent John Adams, with prism in- tegrity. There was Gouverneur Morris, with his graceful manners and wooden leg: Gen. Henry Knox. cheerful. downright. valiant. would be a giant step toward remedying the ills that afflict the institution—public disdain, parliamentary indolence, outright in- competence and an inability to entice quali- fied men and women into legislative service. The prohibition on outside financial ac- tivities. which is no more than is required of the Pennsylvania judiciary. would end much of the outrageous activity that is an accepted part of life in Harrisburg. Active negligence attorneys are sitting in Judgement of no-fault automobile insurance. businessmen vote on business taxes and bankers vote on interest rates. Although the cost of the salary increases would be a grain of sand on the Alpine dune of state spending, some might object on that basis. To them it should be pointed out that eats up $4 million a year in salaries, while a reduced, better-paid body would cost only about $500,000 more. What taxpayers would end up with is a House and Senate composed of fggtime, pro- fessional lawmakers whose att®®ion would not be diverted so easily into private pursuit nor perverted into personal greed. ‘And when someone told you he was a legislator, he would be describing his profess- ion, not his avocation. weighing 300 pounds. There was Alexander Hamilton. 32. brilliant, daring, cheeks as pink as a girl's, with a careless defiance. There was Washington with his magnificent physical appearance. a man of strong passions under iron control, who spoke with ditfidence and whose genius'was in character: There they worked for four months on something bigger than themselves; inhabitants of a little upstart entity on the cdge of the great forest. With three and a half million people compared to Great Britain's 15 milhon, and France's 25 million. trying to invent a new government--a new Thing. They made mistakes; they made compromises; they left a lot of matters purposely vague for those who came after them to fill in, and they avoided high-flown phrases. It was simple, understandable, straightforward, all that about the separation of powers and the three branches of government. And then as an afterthought they affixed a preamble, beginning ‘‘We, the People of the United States...” “We, the people,” a phrase that would wave like a flag of defiance against absolutist kings. They left Philadelphia for their respective states, carrying with them to the uncertain public a feeling that perhaps this startling new document had a meaning for America and even, perhaps, for the world. “We. the people’...farmers and cityfolk read it and wondered and threw out their chests a little. Suddenly. they were a nation. Surely there is something historical that we can draw on here at a time when'one ignoble figure at the top of government says take the matter out of Congress and to the courts, and the other one says take the matter out of the courts and into Congress. Somebody is coming forward to help us Down in Florida, the State Supreme Court has upheld a compulsory publication law. In neighboring Alabama, Gov. George Wallace has signed a bill to bring certain reporters under a new ethics act. Here in Washington, the President is kicking the press around, and out in the country a great many resentful people are yelling hurray, kick ‘em again. It’s time to talk shop. The American press is in trouble. A part of this trouble is perhaps the natural conse- quence of the times we live in. The polls indi- cate that American institutions generally are caught in a kind of bear market of confidence. Everything is going down in the public's esteem—Congress, the courts, the presi- dency. banking. law. labor, industry—and the press is not immune from this trend toward disenchantment. We of the press do have a special problem not shared by other troubled institutions. It is apart of the very nature of news that much of the news we report is ‘bad news.” This is news of crime, corruption, and incompetency in high office. We deal with such intractable issues as race, poverty. famine. and changing morals. and there is always a tendency to blame the messenger for the unhappy news he brings. Yet many of our problems are of our own ought to have done, and we have done certain things we ought not to have done; and our most regrettable failing, I submit, is that we have failed to sell the American people on the nature and the value of a-free press. It is ironic: We are engaged in selling, through our advertising columns and com- mercials; we are engaged in the arts of ex- planation and advocacy in our news and editorial endeavors; but when it comes to the one value we love and cherish most of all, we have failed to sell the concept of press freedom and to explain how it works. Thus we get that incredible 6-1 decision in Florida upholding a forgotten state law of 1913. The act asys that if a newspaper assails the personal character of any candidate for office. or charges a candidate with mis- feasance ‘‘or otherwise attacks his official record.’ the newspaper ‘‘shall upon request of such candidate immediately publish free of cost any reply he may make thereto in as conspicuous a place and in the same kind of type as the matter that called for such reply.” To those of us who live by the press, the Florida upholding a forgotten state law of 1913. The act says that if a newspaper assails proposition were put to public referendum, it probably would win by a landslide. What we see as pure disaster, many persons see as restore our old priorities. It might be Sen. Mondale. It might be somebody else. I peeped in the other day at the Subcommittee on Children and Youth, where Fritz Mondale sat on. of all things, the American Family! Is he crazy? Witnesses 'said’a million US preschool children live in families below the poverty line (don’t they know the President vetoed a minimum wage bill?) ; that the US stands 13th among the nations in combating infant mortality (don’t they know he vetoed health bills?); that 43 percent of the nation’s mothers now work outside the home com- pared to 18 percent in 1948 (don’t they know he vetoed a federal day care hill?) “Richest and strongest of nations we may be,” testified Dr. Margaret Mead, the an- thropologist. ‘but we seem to have lost concern for those who are young or weak, old or poor.” How old-fashion the youthful Mondale looked (he is 45) talking about social im- provements at this “minute of time’; I got away from the almost empty hearing room as fast as I could. Who cares about these things today” But Sen. Mondale cares, and he is an oddly impressive figure as he resists the Nixon efforts to set the whole welfare reform movement back to before the Roosevelt New Deal. He cites the ‘‘grave and fundamental ethical and legal questions of our: society: Who shall live and who shall die? How long shall life be preserved and how shall it be altered? Who shall make decisions? How shall society be governed?’ Those are the decisions involved. The Meet the Press™ panel asked Sen. Mondale last week if he is running for President? I expected him to duck it. Instead. simple fairness. They do not understand what is meant by the freedom to edit and publish, and whose fault, I pray you, is that? It is still more difficult to explain why the new Alabama law is intolerable. On the surface. the act appears to be no more than a serving of the sauce for a goose that is sauce for a gander. Reporters and state legislators alike will be required to. file certain state- ments with a state ethics commission, dis- closing their sources of income. Only those reporters approved by this commission would receive press passes admitting them to committee meetings. pressrooms. and press conferences. Here in Washington, press credentials without batting an eye, he said he had been “exploring” that question and agreed that he 1s “‘not well known nationally.” “The other day when I was asked whether I was thinking about the presidency.” he said simply. “I saw no reason to be cute about it and [said yes I was, and that T was talking to people around the country. I A a very preliminary stage," he said, ‘‘in tefms of my own future.” f This would be preposterously. 9 under normal conditions to think of "4vowing a candidacy. but times are not normal. The nation yearns. 1 think, for some rallying figure--or figures--to restore our pride and remind us of what happer ed in Philadelphia; to light us a candle out of this dismal fog created by arrogant people who tap wires and wear enamel American flags in their Brooks Brothers lapels. : Sen. Mondale is no great shakes as an orator though they say he was a tough prosecutor when he was elected. at 32, at- torney general of" Minnesota. There was a touch of fire when he interjected in his TV interview. ‘But I think the President should know this: The American people want him to produce those tapes.’ Yes, they do. question, doesn’t all this interest Pf lhe weak and poor mean a bigger government? ‘‘When I support better schools for children,” he ties of the American people to stand up to government. When we have better health programs.” he continued, ‘this, in my opinion. strengthens the American people.” I think the programs that I have supported have helped support our condition of liberty against the government,” he said. are handled not by a governmental agency, but by committees of correspondents thems- elves. There is a world of difference. The Alabama law smacks of the despotiggicensing laws of the 18th Century. If the law were uphold it—the reporting of state news would come not from reporters chosen by editors but from reporters approved by politicians. How do we explain why this is wrong? It was Ovid’s sound advice,laid down 2.000 years ago, that to be loved, one must first be lovable. We ought to keep it in mind. If a free press is to survive, a free press must incessantly sell itself. No one else, we may be certain, will ever do the job for us. scripiion, $6. per year. Call 675-5211 for subscriptions. Sylvia Cutler. Advertising Sales i imme See mt
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers