Tuesday, May 30, 1967

Very Late For New Bill To Emerge

matters is also building rapidly, increasing the pressure on the House to get the controversial redistrict-ing matter out of the way.

Although it is not ideal, the Senate rcdistrict-ing proposal is one North Carolina can live with at least until the 1970 census figures are available. At

While many House members may wish to see a number of changes in the Senate-passed congressional redistricting measure, it is not likely that the House will scrap the Senate bill and come up with a completely new alignment Of its own.

For one thing, it is verv late in a slow-moving ------ i- 4. ^

legislative session for the House to undertake from that time it may be necessary to redistnct again in scratch such a project. The Senate has been working order to compeii^ite for population changes

off-and-on since the legislature convened to come decade of the 1960s.

up with a plan that could gain approval of a majority of its members. The House, meanwhile, has let ^

the matter lie awaiting action by the Senate. The Tj V jQ /\iOOI

very fact that the House has awaited Senate action w

rather than hammering out a redistricting pl^an of -- - i ^

its own suggests an inclination in the House to follow \A# Or 1 H t 1*1 SPS

whatever plan the Senate ultimately approved. X lOIXl YV V#* 10^0

It mav be possible, of course, for a few counties i 4- i 4h vnririift F t t

- There is no easy solution to the iNliddle r.ia>t

crisis and there is little likelihood that the situation will be better before it gets worse.

Nations have watched the old hatreds in tliat corner of the world boil over from time to time in

recent years. Unfortunately, it is a situation \vhich

is likely to recur from time to time. With each new crisis between Israel and its neighbors there is al-wavs the hope that shootiii^ which erupts along the frontier will not lead to an all-out military effort by the adversaries.

So far the major world powers, while Uiey have indicated their support for opposing sides in the disputes, have asserted at the same time their influence to prevent a full scale conflict in that area of the world. With its strategic location, the Middle East becomes a serious threat to all the world if fighting moves to a war footing.

The United States and other powers of necessity are involved in the Middle East. They have to be involved in time of crisis simply because they are involved at all other times as well. While the United States can ill afford to commit military forces to a conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors, neither could it afford to stand by and ignore large scale fighting in that area.

The world watches intently while the fuse to another international power keg smoulders.

to be shifted from one district to another in the House consideration. It is even possible that these shifts, if they do not upset the whole redistricting apple cart, may win approval in a House-Senate conference committee. It is far more likely, ho\ve\er that the House will choose to follow the Senate bill even if it is not exactly to the liking of a good many members of the House.

Time is running out and the legislature is under coiirt order to redistrict it congressional seats by July 1. The backlog of other pressing legislative

.:ew

Risk

jjarea

nn

..o

New Tax

By WILLIAM A SHIRES Reflector Raleigh Bureau RALEIGH Barring entirely unforeseen developments, a proposal to allow a local option, one per c*ent additional sales tax levy to benefit local governments is dead and buried for this y^ears legislative session.

The votes which killed it, both in committee and later on the House floor, were extremely close.

But apparently the ghost and political apparition of the of the 1961 sales tax extension, or 'food tax." still stalks North Ca^-olina's legisl a t i v e halls. And it proved decisive.

T cannot vote for any ad ditional sales lax under any circumstances," o n e H o u se member said.

WILLIAM

SHIRES

Other House members said they might vote for a statewide bill but objected to the local option feature which they said would result in a patchwork pattern of taxation across the state.

Supported By Study It was not brought out in debate, at least not strongly, that the local option sales tax proposal was a key recommendation of the states Tax Study Commission in its report last September.

That blue - ribbon commission, created by the 1965 General Assembly, had the matter of financial assistance to local govern m e n t s foremost in mind. This, it said, was one of the problems which gave rise to the creation of this Commission, It added that it studied the local tax situation carefully.

Particular atten t i o n was given to the suggestion that the sales tax be increased by an additional one percent and the proceeds distributed to counties and cities.

This was a major recommendation of the Tax Study Commission. It estimated that in a give-and-take balance sheet based on its recommendations, local govern ments statewide might realize $57.2 million in annual tax revenue from the proposed increase in sales taxes. If offered no other alternative which would bring in more than $3.5 million a year. The added sales tax thus was the base of recom-incndalioni to meet local government needs.

Proposition Goes Dowti

While this was the keystone oi tax reform and tax revision proposals in t.e legislature, it was defeated in the House Finance Committee and then failed twice, by margins of six or seven votes, to reach the House floor for tull scale debate.

It sponsors, in effect, gave up. Rep. Clarence Leatherman oi the House Finance committee told newsmen after Fridays vote to adjourn, 56-51, this is it. Its all over. Leatherman was trying to resurrect the bill and bring it to the House floor for debate despite tabling and, in effect, an unfavorable committee report. This was Leatherman s second attempt to revive the bill and bring it to the House floor. He failed both times.

Some delegations from the more populous countiessuch as Wake and Durhamvoted against his efforts.

Leatherman and other .sup-p>orters of the bill could not understand this. The states most populous countiesthose with the heaviest demands for public service because of growthstand most to gain.

Apparently, however, the political bonus of any further increase in sales taxes held sway. The votes were very close.

ust A

Of

ine

laste

Tuture

Soviet

Power

Poker

19dr L ^ TlMfS SYNDICATE

ffhc CouTicr-iottm^U

Darn Those Cnwy Quacks in the House! Is There a Dim tor in the Senate?"

By JAMES KILPATRICK

Our Surface Blemishes?

The Doily Reflector

INCORPORATED

Established 1882

Published Monday Through Friday Afternoons and Sunday Morning

DAVID JULIAN WHICHARD, Chairman of the Board

JOHN S. WHICHARD-DAVID J. WHICHARD

Publishers

Entered at Post Office, OreenvHle, N- O. as second class mall matter

#

SUBSCRIPTION RATES Home Delivery by Carrier or Motor Route Week 40< Bv Mail, Payable in Advance

One Year .......................................... $18.00

Six Months ..........................................

Three Montba .......................................

One Month ......................................... *

.Prices uiclude sales sax wnere appUcahle)

MEMBER ASSOCIATED PRESS Tha Associated Presa Is exclusively entitled to use tor puhli> cation all news dispatches credited to tt or not otherwfce credited to this paper and also the local news published herein. All rljjhts o publications oi special dispatches here are also re,served.

_dNITBP PRESS INTERNATIONAL

Advertising ratea and deadlines available upon regueat Member Audit Bureau ol Circuiauoh.

By JAMES MARLOW

WASHINGTON (AP)-In the Middle East the United States is getting a taste of things to come, and they won't be pleasant.

The years since World War II certainly the early years when this country had an atomic monopoly and was the most powerful force on earth may have seemed like a new era.

But gradually the postwar years have come to look like an interim period between an era that ended with the war and a new one not fully arrived yet w'hcn the United States must share its dominance with the Soviet Union and Red China.

For most of its history the United States has been t h e captain of the Western Hemisphere, hardly at all at first, then with increasing power and intensity although for a while abusing its power with its Latin neighbors.

Through the years it sought to keep foreign intrudeis out of this hemisphere and now. because of its strength and willingness to use it, can force them to stay out.

The capture of Cuba by Castro's communism was a historical freak. This country was sound asleep to what Castro really meant. When it realized the mistake it backed a

Strength For Today

By EARL L. DOUGLASS HE STUCK BY HIS COLORS One of the greatest friends of the common man produced during the whole of olt hi.s-tory was Horace Greeley. Born in poverty, he rose to such a place of influence by the might of his pen that every evil system feared him and every friend of liberty loved him.

Greeley's life as one long and fretful tragedy. Although he aspired to public office, he never but once held a public office and that a minor one. He was the Democratic nominee for president in 1872 and when beaten by Grant he was able to survive the ordeal only a few weeks, .'\flcr bearing* incalculable burdens of grief, domestic infelicity, disappointment, and public abuse he laid down his life a martyr to the ideals he had faithfully served.

Everyone did not agree with Greeley, but even his enemies respected his candor and his crystal-clear honesty. lie had a trenchant English stv le w hich appealed rqually to I he learned and the unlearned. The reason he was so inlhi-cntial was that a w hole nation knew that he served no man.

His counterpart does not exist in modern life today, and we may well wish that it did. .Million's would hail as a inod-eiTi ines.siah anyone who, in the midst of modern duplicity and self-.seeking. would raise the standard of nncompromi.s-ing honesty in public all airs and slick by his colors.

disastrous Cuban - exile invasion to tlirow him out.

Even so, Castro was a kind of local boy. It was when Moscow tried to move into the hemisphere by putting mi.ssil-es in Cuba that this country fully asserted itself ordering the Soviets out. even if it meant war.

Moscow was at a disadvantage. It was butting into something far from its home base, and it backed down.

Meanwhile, nothing showed better the end of the old era than what happened to Britain, the colonial empire and lord of the sea. It became a second - rate power unable (Continued On Page 5)

In a perceptive essay a few years ago, Henry Steele Coin-mager wrote movingly of Americas search for a usable past. On this Memorial Day, one is struck by the sobering thought that the usable past he described is not today being used, or enlarged, or revered. It is being perverted instead.

Commagers point was that, alone among the great nations of the world. America embarked on nationhood with no distinctive past that

might be called her own. The sansculottes, emerging from their Revolution, had a paN that reached to ancient Gaul. The Russian revolutionaries, storming the winter palace, trod upon the rosebeds of the czars. The Italians, Germans, Greeks, Turks. Egyptians, Chinese in every case, the transmutations that led to their nationhood had a national past to build on.

It was different here. Our revolutionary forefathers, bringing forth their new na-

Other Editors Sa'/ing This Date-' ^Refute Peaceniks

40 Years

Ago Today

By FOY H. DUNCAN May 30, 1927 City Business Houses Begin Closing 15th

Following business houses have signed petitions agreeing to close their places each Wednesday afternoon beginning with June 15th through August 15th; C. Hcbcr Forbes, Curtis Perkins, McKay Washington & Co., Griffin & Williams. H. .A. White & Sons, Batchelor Bros, Greenv i 11 e Banking Trust Co., Whichards Grocery, V. Waters, W. L. Best, (jharles Stores, Hee-dens, National Bank, Williams - Chapman, Pitt She Co., A. .\nd P. Tea Co. (2 stores) A. B. Ellington & Co., Hood System., Ind. Bank, Quinn - Miller Co., Home Furniture Co., Willards Grocery, The Vantic Roxc, E. Saieed, McClellans Stores, Misses Imwcs, Moseley Bros., John Stiieed, D. N. Halen. Blount Harvey Co.. J. C. Penney Co., Turnage - Winslow, The Farmers Bank, Young Mercantile Co., B. G. Abeyounis, R. E. Harris & Co., M. G. Duke, S. M. Woolfolk, S. M. Waters. M System Store. Green v i 1 le Grocery Co., Penders (2 stores). .. .

Lindbergh Is Reported To Be Homesick

London, May 30 Captain Lindbergh is homesickterribly homesick. He said so this morning. The knight of the air appreciates to the fullest extent the honors bcsto wed upon him here in Brussels and in Paris but lie is eager to lelurn home at the earliest possible moment . . .

(ROANOKE WORLD-NEWS)

.Meticulous investigation by Associated Press correspondents now has provided a conclusive answer to unsub-slantiated accusations that President Johnson has been more interested in a Vicinam military victory than m a peaceful setllemenl. It just isn't so and the charges never have made sense.

Through various sources in Washington, Warsaw and other points il is di.scloscd that there was a serious peace effort between mid-November and late April. For more than fur months all U. S. bombing near the North Vietnamese capital of Hanoi wms suspended while our government sought a favorable reply from Ho Chi Minh.

Our government agreed to three truce periods during the four months. Mr. Johnson wrote a personal note to Ho which the latter published in sneering and defiant fashion. The U.S. raids on transportation targets on Dec. 13-14 could by no means be justifiably used by Ho as an excuse to shun negotiations. The

raids came only after it had been proven 'pcyond question that North Vietnam had been stepping up its movement of men and supplies into the south. The process was repeated several times.

All this was happening while the peaceniks were marching and demonstrating in America and giving vent to charges that ih'esdient Johnson was doing nothing to end the conflict. Whatever may be his faults, Mr. Johnson could not possibly be so calloused as to wish a continuation of warfare. The bloodshed, suffering, and dcalli among our fighting men weigh heavily on his heart. It can be justified only by a dclcrniinalion that aggression shall not be rewarded and that freedom shall be guaranteed a people which wants to be let alone.

Those who have assaulted the Presidents integrity have fallen into the trap of Communist propaganda and even though well meaning, no doubt, have done their country and the men in uniform a disservice by helping to prolong the fight The Roanoke World-News.

tion, surely were endowed with a glorious past crowned heads, and Shakespeares plays, the seeds that sprang from Runnymede but this was not an American past. It was largely hand-me-d o w n British. The few domestic symobls and heroes of that time were essentially colonial; they were local to Virginia or Massachusetts or Pennsylvania or New York, and the descendants of Oglethorpe had little to share with the descendants of Mather and Williams. The task of creation had to be done from scratch.

Nothing in the hiMory of American nationalism, wrote Commngcr. is more imprrs-siv% than the speed and the 'lavi.'hness with which Americans provided themselves with a usable pa.st: histoi \, leg

ends. symbols, paintings, sculpture, monuments, .''hrin-cs. holy days, ballads, patriotic song.s. heroes, and with some difficulty villains.

Speedily, we embraced the eagle as* a national emblem, contrived a flag that gave visible evidence of growth, and hailed that angled

banner in words that bristled with national pride. There were patriots in those days, and men were proud to he known by that name. From one generation to an o t h c r, through the w inning of t h e West, through bloody - wars, through the assimilation of immigrants, Americans cherished their past and honored its meaning. Children piped their pledges of allegiance to the flag. Men marched in I .Am an American Day parades.

Perhaps nowhere else in the Western world. w rote Commager, is loyalty such a touchstone as in the United States.

Is this true of Mcmor i a 1 Day in 19()7. In the vocahu-(Continued On Page 51

Bv ROWLAND EVANS and ROBERT NOVAK

WASHINGTON The first solid indicatioii that the Soviet Union encouraged Egypts Carnal Abdel Nasser to make trouble beween the Arab states and Israel came in a secret Moscow talk between an Israeli diplomat a ''d a mid- . die - level official from the Soviet foreign office.

Seeking just one solid piece of information from the Russian official of what course the Soviet Union might follow after Nassers challenge to Israel, the Israeli diplomat came away with the following strong impression implied rather than stated:

That Russia DID encourage Nasser to bring the M i d d 1 e Eastern pot to the edge of a boil, but had no idea Nasser would move so precipitously;

That the real reason Moscow wanted Nasser to make trouble was to bring indirect pressure on the United States to tone down the war in Vietnam;

That the Soviet Union chose the Middle East - because the ingredients wer^ all there to make the United States sweat without directly involving the Soviet Union.

Behind this Soviet move is deep frustration over Moscow's inability to make its influence felt in Hanoi. It is accepted here that the Soviet Union played a serious role m attempting to arrange negotiations between Hanoi and th$

U. S. early this year. Also accepted is the fact that Ho Chi Minh simply refused to listen to Moscow.

Fearf-ul of growing Chine.^e t'ommunisl influence on North Vietnam. Mo.scow decided that the next be.st way to cool off Southeast Asia was to raise the spectre of possible U. S. military involvement some

where else in the world. Nas-.scr's ambition to reassert hi.s role as Arab leader was the toul at hand, and the Soviet Union deliberately set out to use it.

Now that Nasser has

brought the Middle East to the edge of war, Moscow is believed by top U. S. officials to be eager to calm the war passion. At this writing,- however, no one here kiiows how much influence Moscow has with Nasser.

A footnote: President Johnson was deeply upset when

his UN ambassador Arthur

Goldberg, suggested in New York that the French plan for a big - power conference to settle the dispute seemed like a sound idea. In the privacy of the White House, Mr. Johnson stormed that Goldb e r gs statement had nvie Fre i c h Pre.sidcnt Charles de Gaulle, who has thwarted the U.S. at every turn, look like a hero.

Perhaps partly as a result of this Presidential anger, Rusk has ordered Goldberg to say nothing at the UN without first informing Rusk exactly w'hat he i.s goins to say. Romney in the boulh Leonard Hall, old - pro bu^^s ot the Romney - ior - President campaign, is dispatching hif; top political troublcslioot-cr for quiet talks with Rcpul)-lieans in North Carolina.

Robert J. (Jack) McIntosh, the former Michigan Con

gressman who is working fulltime in the Romney presidential drive, will go to N o r t h Carolina in a lew days~the fii'st Southern stale where the Hall - .McIntosh team has given top - priority attention. The McIntosh visit tells

(Continued On Page 51

fe Sam Is Behind The Times

Birthday Parly

Little Billie .Alford delightfully entertained a number of hi.s friends Saturday ulternoon at (he home o*' his grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. 0. C. Holmes on SMmmit Street. , . . Little Laura E. Haskins won the prize la box of candy) in the game of pinning the mule's tail .

nc

By ELMER ROESSNER

If a young lady buys a persimmon - colored siz.e 36 sweater in any one of the stores of a national chain, within minutes that fact is transmitted by wire to a computer in N e w York.

Thus the chain headquarters knows at any minute exactly how many persimmon-colored size 36 sweaters it has in all of its outlets, how popular persimmon-colored sweat o i's arc, for eNa)iipl^. in rclafhin to grapefruit - yellow swcd* ters. when to reorder a n d when to di'op the item. In the same way. it gathers information on thousands of other items.

But the United States gov-eryment. for whom la.'it, accurate information on what's going on in the economy is vastly greater, still gathers essential information in its slow, ponderous way.

Income Data Sluggish

One of the most important statistical series published by the government is the Depari-mcnt of Commerce's report on total personal income. It is important to all merchandising plans, to all labor iiegotio-tions, to banks, advertising agencies and almost all other businesses.

EL.MER

ROESSNER

Yet the report on the April incoine $614 billion at annual rales, an increase ol $1.5 billion over March, by the way was issued on May 18. With elficicnt reporting and electronic computers, the information might have been availalbe

10 days earlier.

Another frinslancc: 'o;i-

struction activity data is of vital importance to the steel industry and other suppliers of materials, contractors, workers, merchandisers and on and on. Yet on May 11 Commerce Department announced a new publication seiiedule for the monthly value of construction put in place.

Under the new schedule, it announced, the value - in-place statistics for any month will be released to the press for Ihc first time approximately the 10th ol the second following month. In tlie past such estimates were released almost a month earlier.

And Commerce is much more efficient in producing statistics than many other agencies, some of whom yield data in the following year. FRB President Protests

W. Braddock Hickman, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, in an ad

dress at Oliio State University. declared that present methods of collecting and processing national economic data are dangerously inadequate for efficient policy making.

No agency will receive ade-(juatc appropriations for such mundane things as data collecting and processing unless and until high - level public officials recognize the dangers involved, he said.

'It is inconceivable Uiat the greatest nal.ion in the world, witli a gross national product of over $750 billion a year, spends only $125 million ofl its federal statistical programs.

The Federal Reserve System is more flexible in making monetary policy than is Hie administration in making fiscal policy, but mone t a r y policy needs improved measures of the time lags and impacts of its actions on t h economy, he added.