Thursday, AAarch 27, 1969

Tough Assignment In Curbing Smut

SHOWDOWN TIME!

There h? little doubt North Carolina needs to do something reasonable and yet effective to cope with the smut and pornographic literature that has engulfed its newsstands and magazine racks in recent years.

The measure now before the legislature that would permit officers of the court to bring civil action to enjoin distribution of literature deemed harmful to minors may provide the answer. Such a mea.^-ure carries with it the responsibility on the part of some person or group to serve as censors over what may be displayed for public sale. Denying a publica-fTbn the right to be sold would keep it away from adults as well as from the minors, and this is usually where the effectiveness of such a law really bogs down.

It should not be expected that the state will enact a law which will allow prosecutors or solicitors to ban the sal^ of any publication which they

Seek Funds In

deem distasteful. It would be difficult to set out In legal tenn.s the speeiiications of what type magazine or publication could be deemed harmful to minors without cutting off the supply of some of the magazines and publications a good many adults can hardly wait to get their hands oh

Unless the judiciary subcommittee working on the bill can come up with some new approach to the situation. North Carolina newsstands will either continue to offer about the same variety and calibre of publications they now have, or adults will have to he deprived along with minors of some of the .imut and pornographic publications. And even if the latter is the result, someone will have to act as censor in determining what is acceptable for public sale and what is not.

Even working with a proposal patterned after a N>w York law that has been upheld by the Supreme Court, North Carolina legislators still have a tough a.'^signment to write a law that will be effective in achieving the goal legislators seek and many citizens hope for.

Electoral Vote Should

insurance rield Be As voters intended

By WILLIAM A. SHIRES Reflector Raleigh Bureau

RALEIGH - One of the Scott administration's tax bills would tack another one half of one per cent on insurance premium rates in North Carolina and yield an estimated $10 million for 19-69-71.

This caused some raised

WILLIAM

SHIRES

eyebrowssurprise on the part of many at the sheer volume of the insurance business in this state, its growth rate and potential.

The fact is that the state has been plowing and reaping in the insurance premium field for many years .And profitably. Still *the industry has continued a strong growth pattern.

Given the estimated yield in tax revenue on one half of one per cent more in premium taxes it is not difficult to calculate the approximate total businessover a billion dollars a year.

Tax Collections Cimb

0\'erall, insurance premium tax collections have been increasing each vear sinct the 1930s.

State tax experts say no other major state tax has experienced such a prolonged period of growth in collections.

The insurance tax category presently yields nearh S25 million a year$50 million per biennium. The tax on gross premiums produces by far the greatest amount of revenue in the insurance tax category'.

But the state also levies taxes on insurance comrany licenses, insurance agents licenses, on agents exa.mina-tion fees and insurance brokers* licenses.

In 1965-66, the premiums

tax yielded $19 3 miHion of the total $20 I million collections in tlie insurance tax category, figures Cited The slate collects tax revenue from both foreign and domestic insurance comipan-les. But a look at just one segment of the domestic picture indicates the enormous impact of the insurance business in North Carolina.

Life insurance companies domiciled in .North Carolina had an annual payroll in 1968 totaling $44.5 million and employed 7,439 people.

In Guilford County, which is the state's life insurance leader, four companies based in Greensboro and High Point had a combined payroll . of more than $17 million and the four companies had 2.940 employes.

Wake County, also with four locally based life insurance companies employing 1,547 people, had an $8.7 million payroll from these firms.

Durham County has two locally based life insurance firms which provided more than $7.1 million in payroll last year. Forsyth County has three which provided a $4.2 million payroll. Five in Mecklenburg County provided more than $4.1 million in payroll checks during 1968.

In addition there are life insurance companies ha =;cd in Edgecombe, Nash and Wilkes Counties.

Uiwmakers I,noking .Mmost e\cry se-'Sion of the legislature lor 20 \oars has looked at I hr insurance industry as a possible source of revenue. -

In 1959, the legislature im-b!.. raided the gross prcmium rate auphrahlc to domestic life lompanies from one to one au(i a naU per cent and th< h-.Ip.'d :he Hodges ad-miuist'-a*.''-^ 'i.rmount a state iinanciii crr's.

In 195'h ine legislat.'^re rn-po.sed an additional one ; er cent gross premiums tax on certain fire and lightning insurance policies. But the Statf. Supreme Court struck thi.s down as being tm> narrow to be ronstitutinnal. In 1961. the legislature amended the earlier law and broadened the premiums tax base to Its present level.

Certainly one of the inequities irf our present system of electing a pre.sident is the fact that an elector is not bound to vote for his partys nominee.

A' bill introduced in the State Legislature would make it mandatory for a presidential elector in North Carolina to vote for the nominee of his party. The alternative would be for the elector to resign and allow someone else to be appointed.

This bill would prevent the type thing that occurred in the recent election w'hen a Republican elector refu.sed to vote for Nixon and, instead, cast hi.s ballot for George C. Wallace.

There was nothing in" the law to prevent this. However, the voters when they went to the polls ca.st their ballots for the presidential candidates by name and, since Wallaces name was on the ballot, too, it was obxdous that the majority of Tar Heels did not want him to serve as president.

Many voters are not fully aware that when they xote in presidential elections they are voting for party electors and not for actual candidates who.ae names are listed.

The law should assure that the candidate who carries the state receives the electoral votes. There are good arguments for abolishing the electoral college entfreh' and choosing the president by popular x'ote. Until this matter is fullv studied, however, fhe North Carolina TvCgislature 'should insure that electoral votes are cast as the voters intended.

By JAMES KILPATRICK

Industry Shares A Duty

Conclusions

r

1

lO

3e Jumoed At

The facts were never in much dispute: Irene Yarrow used to see perfectly. Now she is nearly blindg She lost her vision as a result of taking the drug Aralen over a period of years. .Now the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of .Appeals has applied the law of civil liability to those facts, in an opinion that all American industry ought to take deeply to heart.

i

Let the editorial point be made at the outset: American manufacturers, dealing in national and international markets, have public responsibilities today that have to be fully assumed. The day is behind us of hand-made horseshoes and home- baked

bread. When a product goes wrongnot only in the drug and automobile industries, but in ever industry affecting human well beingthe manu

facturer has an affirmative duty to come clean, promptly and without resentation.

Mrs. Yarrow is a 52-year-old housewife, the mother of four, living in Sioux Falls, S.D. almost 20 years ago, she began going to her general practitioner, Dr. Robert G. Olson, for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. He tried cortisone derivatives and aspirin. They werent much help.

One day late in 1957, a detail man for Sterling Drug, Inc., William Wilka, paid a routine call on Dr. Olson. He

By HAL BOYLE NEW YORK (AP) - Jumping to conclusions:

Most wives arent thrilled by the prospect of a future in which most of their household tasks will be done by a computer. They realize that a computer, it breaks down,

chen.

Other Editors Say

The biggest tyrants in t h e average office are those who are most henpecked at home.

Nothing has less personality than a breaded veal cutlet warmed over after sitting in the refrigerator for two days. Any husband served one should have legal grounds for divorce.

Deserving Of , Support

(Henderson Dispatch)

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IS one machine they cant iix with a hairpin.

Weight lifters are the most introverted of athletes, even more so than professional baseball pitchers

You can bet that if- a man has more than three kinds of medicine in his office desk drawer, he's already look i h g forward to retire.merit.

The older and richer a fellow gets, the more he I i k es To look back and speak wistfully of the deprivations of his childhood. He gets m o re real pleasure out of recalling them than he does enjoying his present wealth.

Don't you hate to eat in restaurants that have imperious hatcheck girls? They put XO in a bad mood even before the headwailer can give you a seat too near the kit-

You never know how dumb a woman can be until you meet a smart one who likes to show off her intelligence.

I automatically trust a man who wears suspenders. Anyone that old - fashioned just couldn't be a modern .successful crook.

One of the big differences between men and women is that two men can work in a kitchen together and emerge still friendly toward each other.

No one is welcomed m o re to his face and talked about more behind his back than a gossip. But at least isnt he less of a h^pocrite than the rest of us?

An old - timer is a guy who can remember when he felt safe as long as he had a buck in his pocket.

Who can look at pigeons conducting their courtships in spring without sighing inside about some girl he wooed and lost in his own youth?

It is hard to like aman with prejudices unless he happens to share our own.

The chore that secretaries dislike performing miost is having to remember to buy the bosss wife flowers on her (Continued On Page 5)

One of the most deserving activities here and elsewhere in the State is the work of rescue squads. Unfortunately, the public is not as familiar as it might be with their service and the benefits derived from their dedicated efforts. They respond to calls to go where they are needed and remain as long as necessary, and receive no compensation. The public owes these men a debt of gratitude f o r what they have done and are doing.

The Vance County Resc u e Squad is one of The oldest in the State. It came into existence through voluntary efforts on the part of a small group of men and women not long after Kerr lake filled following completion of the dam on Roanoke River. In t h o se early days there were many deaths by drowning or other accidents at the lake, since those who would enjoy the recreation were not v/ell informed about the treacherous nature of so large a body of water. Those tragedies served to arouse boating parties and bathers about the haz

ards that exist.

It was in that period that the Rescue Squad was organized. It has been available and active ever since, and is more efficient and has better equipment today than ever before. It could profit by more efficient devices and would be in position to give speedier service and possibly even save lives that otherwise might be lost.

Rep. James Speed of Franklin county, and of t h is House district, has introduced a bill in the Legislature that would allow tax deductions for cash donations to rescue squads wherever they exist in the State. The proposal carries no actual appropriation but tax deducti o n s should encourage a more generous response on the part of the public in supporting these groups.

Speeds bill ought to be enacted into law, and we have a feeling that it will be. It would serve a mighty good purpose. Moreover, it would represent appreciation on the part of the public and would encourage volunteer members in their service at a n y time where needed.

wanted to tell him, among other things, about a product just approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treatment of arthritis and certain skin diseases.

This was .Aralen, Sterling trade -name for chloroquine phasphate. The drug had an interesting history. It wasfirst synthesized in Germany in 1935 as a possible anti-malarial agent. No one seemed especially interested in anti-malarial agents, and the discovery slept in the files for ten years. Then the U.S. armed forces, engaged in fighting tropical battles, mounted a crash program in the field. Some 16,000 drugs were tested. These were weeded down to fourteen. Prisoners in Georgia and Illinois volunteered for experiments. (Jhloroquine phosphate emerged as the finest anti-malarial agent of them all; and the drug was swiftly marketed for this purpose.

Then physicians discovered that the drug also worked for arthritis and certain skin conditions. No adverse reactions could be detected. The Sterling Company, which had acquired rights to Aralen, obtained FC-A approval for these additional purposes. And along toward Christas of 1957, salesman Wilka came to call on Dr. Olson.,

Dr. Olson put Mrs. Yarrow on .Aralen, one 250-milIigram tablet a day. This was in January of 1958. The tablets seemed to help. She stayed on them until October of 1964. Meanwhile, things were happening: She began to have dif-threading a needle, driving a car. Her eye doctor prescribed bifocals. The conditions got worse. Finally, a full examination disclosed severe damage to her retinas. The Aralen was stopped but only peripheral vision remained.

Other things were happening in this period. In 1957, at the very time Aralen was getting additional FDA approval, two Cincinnati dermatologists published a paper on optical damage attributable to chlorn-quine phosphate. Similar papers appeared in England and (Continued On Page 5)

1: uture

By VERN HAUGLAND

WASHINGTON (AP) -The supersonic transport, which has generated almost as much noise within government as critics say it would in flight, faces a (loubtful future at the hands of a budgetconscious White House.

A final decision on the controversial program is expected soon after a report goes to President Nixon this week from Secretary of Transport tation John Volpe.

' Volpe has until recent 1 y been an outspoken supporter of developing an American S-ST and for this reason the report is expected to be favorable if not an outright recommendation for continued work.

Spadework for the report, however, was don by a review board of Cabinet undersecretaries and high - 1 e v el agency heads known to have included bitter critics of the SST.

Although the report is likely to carry ciMisiderable weight, it goes to the White House at a time when President Nixon is combing the budget for soft spots and may be reluctant to restore funds that former President Johnson left out of his budget.

Volpe took note of this in a recent interview with the Associated Press when he said aU of us recognize the inflationary picture.

Program leaders have estimated more than $200 million will be needed to continue SST development in t h next fiscal year, if the 1,800-mile-an-hour airliner is to become available for commercial use by 1976 or 1977.

The Boeing Co., Seattle, has a contract to build two protype or flying test models, using engines provided by General Electric Co., Cincinnati. The Federal Aviat i o n Administration has estimated that the government and contractors will have spent $1.5 billion on the program by the time the prototype phase has been completed.

SST backers say the United , States must develop its own model to remain competitive with the French - British Concorde and the Russian TU-144. Both the foreign models have flown, but are not expected to be in commercial use until the 197'0s.

Critics of the program want development of an SST held up until some way can be found to curb the noise it makes on landings and takeoffs and when it era s h e s through the sound barrier.

Some critics also say that with only a few more years work a hypersonic transport may be developed that will make the SST obsolete.

Opinions in Brie:

Few men during their lifetime come anywhere near exhausting the resources dwelling within them. There are deep weUs of strength that are never used.Rear Adm. Richard E. Byrd.

Of the many things we have done to (iemocracy in the past, the worst has been the indignity of taking U for granted.Max Lerner.

Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live.Henry Van Dyke.

More For Savers, Deoositors

Strength For Today

LNNER AND OLTER RARMO.NY

Tnere have to be laws on the statute books to regulate our behavior, but man usually rebels when these laws become too specific or too severe. We live in an age which particularly dislikes the restraint of laws. Probably all generations of humans'have wanted to do what they wanted to do when they wanted to do it. But our generation is particularly given to lawlessness.

Strange as it may seem, there is a good side to all this as well as a bad side. Something witto us tells us that laws written on the pages of a J)ook are not sufficient. Law bv.itself is nothing. The situation is only satisfactory, when

the law is right, and mans response to the law prompt and. willing.

This means that laws, to be effective, must not only be written on the pages of books but also in our hearts on the fleshly tables of our hearts, as the Bible puts it In Hebrews 10 we read that (3od declares that He will put his laws in men's hearts and upon their minds will He write them. When this happ e n s, then peace and obedience ensue.

The only law that rea 11 y operates is the law that we have inside our hearts and this law must correspond to laws which have come out of the experience of the race. Correspondence is the word.

Earl L. Douglass

By ELMER ROESSNER The rise in banks prime interest rate to 7Vz per cent will have many far - reaching effects on the economy, many more than those cited Monday. Here are some.

'*avers and despositors will demand higher interest rates. They will resent the fact that banks, by law, pay only 5 per cent on their savings, yet get 7^ per cent and usually more for those same dollars. Expect some of the populist Congressmen to demand legislation to cut this margin.

Companies issuing b o n ds will have to pay higher rates. When Consolidated Edi son. New Yorks giant electric utility, wanted to raise $80 million shortly after the bank rate went up, it had to pay a net interest rate of 7.988 per cent This is a record return on .A - rated bonds, the security of which is enhanced bv the benigh Public Utilities Commissi( of New York stata.

Break For Little People

The high bank rate makes even sweeter the fact that money can be borrowed on cash - value life insurance policies at what are now comparatively low rates. T h e se policies guarantee in writing to lend the policy holder money up to the full cash value. Most policies provide for lending at 5 per cent; some, such as Metropolitan, provide 6 per cent loans.

Time was when these loans were under blistering attack by consumer groups and they demanded, should policy holders be forced to pay 5 or 6 per cent on their own money. especially at times when banks would lend them money at 3 H or 4 per cent?

But times have changed,. A policy holder can borrow money at 5 or 6 per cent and make a profit by paying off revolving credit and instalment loans that cost him perhaps 18 per cent. Or he can bctfTOW file money and pay

off all or part of his 8 per

cent mortgage. Or he can

borrow it and put it in mutual funds that are paying 8 per cent, or in mortgages that pay 8 per cent and more, cr

buy some of those Con Ed

bonds.

BJMRR

aOESSNEK

Joe Doakes Will Get The Bill

The rise in the prime rate will eventually affect the fate on all borrowing; in fact. It has already begun to do so Very soon rates on instalment loans and other consumer credit will rise. The higher inter

est rates will be passed on to the person who just cant pass it on any more: the consumer. Like the surtax, it will mean higher prices.

The rise in interest rates will compel many legislatures to amend usury laws. Many states, Michigan for example, puts a limit of 7 per cent on certain types of loans. An individual who was not a v^ teran or who could not qualify under the Federal Housing Administration, finds it impossible to get a mortgage when buying a home. A pending bill would lift the us u r y mark to 9 per cent.

Most state usury laws limit interest an individual can be charged to 7, 8 or same small percentage. However, they usually exempt corpor- i ations from the limits. This is forcing thousands of ho-Tie buyers to incorporate, and then to pay 10, 12 or higher percentages for mortgages, and bear the costs of inca-| poratioB Uml.