Saturday, May 4, 1963

Uncertainty Can Hurt Proficiency

I

If an appreciable number of North Carolina'f Highway Patrolmen feel that an arrest quotii system is operated within their organization, that assumption on the part of the patrolmen is bound to have a bearing on their work.

Whether an arrest quota system is official or unofficial, real or imagined, the patrolman who thinks he is required to make a specified minimum number of arrests each month is under pressure to meet that minimum.

A member of the legislative subcommittee investigating the matter of an arrest quota system in the State Highway Patrol has cited figures which should cause additional concern throughout the state. Rep. F. D. B. Harding has asserted that 90 of 210 patrolmen who answered a questionaire answered yes to the question Is there an official or unofficial arrest quota in your troop?" The other 112 who answered the questionaire answered no" to the same question. Eighty-three of the patrolmen answered yes to the question, Is this used as a basis for advancement.

Admittedly, the 90 patrolmen who think they are under an arrest quota system do not constitute quite 20 per cent of the 510 members of the Highway Patrol who received the questionaire. These 90, however, constitute almost half of the 210 who have answered the questionaire.

If, as Highway Patrol officials have declared,

And Everywhere That Barry Went

Arguing The !i^unaways Case

By WnXIAM A. SHIRES

GAMBLINGHer name hasnt been mentioned in the legal pyrotechic of formal debate but in effect the romance of young Gamble Benedict may be winning another point in North Carolina.

The beautiful teen-age typewriter heiress won herself legal sanctuary and a husband in a sensational development to a North Carolina hideaway three years ago.

Now. while the House of Representatives may nc^ be sniffing orange blo.ssoms among the palm trees it is springtime around the State House.

And whether they realize it or not. the lawmakers have been arguing the case of this famous runaw'ay heiress in a bill dealing with a proposed Interstate compact on juveniles.

JUVENILES The measure pertains to apprehension, arrest and detaining of juvenile escapers, fugitives, offenders and runaways who flee to other states.

It would establish agreements between various states on these matters and on return of the Juveniles.

Unofficially and informally, at least, this legislation to put North Carolina in the interstate compact on juveniles is being called the Gamble Benedict bill.

This is because it applies to runaways under 21 years of age. Gamble Benedict was only 19 when she eloped against her grandmothers wishes and married 35-year-old Andre Pomm-beanu before a justice of the peace at Henders(Miville.

This case focused attention on North Carolinas laws relating to runaways.

OBJECTThe runaway provision in the bill on an Interstate cwnpaot is the chief point at issue, and the provision which Rep. Steve DoUey of Gaston County believes ought to be amended or deleted.

Legally, says DoUey, It makes no distinction between juvenile delinquents and non-delinquent Juveniles.

The Interstate compact bill was up for passage In the House when DoUey, one of the youngest members of the legislature, arose to object.

He proposed to amend the bill, but said to be perfectly frank such Interstate compact bills are package deals, take It or leave it. He conceded that amending the bUl might make it inapplicable, but otherwise he felt it was unacceptable. DoUeys legal point w-as on definition of minors and Juveniles. Under North Carolina

law, a Juvenile Is someone under 16 years old. A minor Is somewie under 21. But the compact would treat anyone under 21 as a juvenile.

He didnt say so. but Gamble Benedict would have been a juvenile under this law and subject to arrest and detention. Said Dolley, aU It would take would have been a telephone caU to a policeman. . .reasonable infonnation. Under this biU, he said, a non-delinquent juvenile might be arrested and, he contended, held without bond or without a hearing for as long as 90 days.

DoUey has no objection to this juvenUe-minor definition if it is amended to apply to persons under 16 years old, conforming to the North Carolina definition of juveniles.

But he proposed instead to eliminate the entire section relating to runaways.

SUPPORTReps. Roger Kiser of Scotland and I.C. Crawford of Buncombe suggested Instead that the bUl be re-referred to Judiciary n committee. and DoUey agreed.

Rep. Paul Story of McDoweU. who argued for the bUl in a heated floor speech and series of questions directed at DoUey, objected contending that it meant in effect that the biU would be buried. Crawford said that was not the Intention of re-referral.

DoUey agreed to further study. He conceded that amending the bUl possibly would render it inoperative but said he felt that it would withstand a court test anyway.

Story argued that the proposed interstate compact would provide the only machinery a-vailable for dealing with juvenile delinquents, runaways and fugitives. At present, he said, the only method is to take them to a state line and push them over and he argued that this probably is unconstitutional.

What wlU we do with these 12 and 13 year olds? Story asked. Are we to let them run wUd as in the past?

ARGUEDoUey argued that he w'as not objecting to the provisions applying to young people under 16 years old, but to the indicated denial of due process of law to those who are 19 or 20 years old. By voice vote, the biU went back to committee.

The Gamble Benedict story is one of young line and the triumph of Cupid over legal tech-nicaUties and roadblocks in the law books. It had cleared another hurdle.

no quota system is in effect, it is evident that this needs to be made absolutely 9lear to an appreciable number of members of the patrol.

At best, the situation shows a considerable degree of misunderstanding on the part of the patrolmen concerning regulations which affect thcr duties. Are there other areas in which patrolmen think they are required to do certain things that, officially, they are not required to do? The legislative subcommittee investigating the arrest quota should broaden its inquiry to include other areas of the patrols work.

No organization can function at top proficiency if its members are not sure exactly what is required of them. If such a situation exists today in our Highway Patrol, the legislature should insist thal the situation be corrected without delay.

Traffic Movement Is Improved By Change

Tie new parking system recently p,ut into effect in a portion of Greenvilles business district has impressed us favorably in the past few days.

By providing more space for vehicles to maneuver in entering and leaving parking spaces on the street, the system has, of course, eliminated some on-street parking in the business district. This disadvantage, in our opinion, is more than offset by the better traffic movement which has resulted from the change in the on-street parking system.

Less time is required for drivers to properly park their vehicles in the newly marked spaces.

Traffic movement is less obstructed by cars entering or leaving the on-street parking slots. No longer do lines of cars congregate behind a driver who By HAL BOYLE IS having difficulty backing into a parking space.

No longer does the driver have to inch his car back and forth several times trying to enter or leave a parking space.

The new system, in our opinion, will prove its worth in spite of the fact that some on-street parking places have been eliminated in the business district.

^ .McNinght SyndicU. Int.

Those Were The Days

V

Denaturing Our Own Culture

The Daily Reflector

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Published Every Afternoon Except Sunday Established 1882 DAVID JULIAN WHICHARD, Publlihar

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P

By JOHN CHAMBERLAIN

Copyright. 1963, King Features Syndicate. Inc.

We make fun of the Soviets when they remove the name of Trotsky from the history of the Russian Revolution and change the name of Stalingrad to something else. But in our own way we seem to be doing our best to denature the record of our own past.

There is the report coming from Philadelphia, for example, that the local Board of Education has removed Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn from the public school curriculum and replaced it with an adapted version wliich has simplified the Southwestem dialect and deleted supposedly derogatory references to Negroes. The effect of this, of course, is to deprive all the students, the Negroes included. of any understanding of the culture that forced the Civil War in the first place and brought about Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in the second. If our school boards persist in this sort of thing, we shall end up as a nation of prime ignoramuses.

Mark Twain was a man of hLs times, a Missourian who spoke (and wrote) the border state dialect and created characters that Were drawn from the life around him. They used offensive expressions on occasion. But the story of Huckleberry Finn is a story inwhich the native humanity of a boy triumph-s over the narrow perspectives of his time and place. No one has ever dealt with the subject of race relationships as sj-mpathetically as Mark Tw^ain did in Huckleb e r r y Finn. The book needs no rewriting to convey its basic tenderness. And what could be less segregated than putting a boy (Huck Finn) on a raft with a Negro (Nigger Jim. as everybody called him in the culture into whlch Huck had been bom) and letting them philosophize together in a warm way that had Mark Twains obvious approval?

The rage to denature products that were bom of a given time and place is insidious because, OTice started, there Is no end to It. The same logic that is employed to compel a rewriting of Huckleberry Finn must make it Impossible for teachers to assign almost anything of note that has been written in the past half century. Sinclair Lewis would be out because he has insulted business men and held evangelist clergymen up to ridicule. Hemingway's language would have to be perfumed and prettified, and

one particularly offensive character in his The Sun Also Rises would have to be eliminated entirely because he happens to have a Jewish name. The plots of Theodore Dreisers books would have to be almost totally destroyed, for Dreiser In the name of realism liked to write about certain things that happened without benefit of clergy.

Pushing backward from the modem scene, Finley Peter Dunne's Mr. Dooley would have to have his language reprocessed to get the offensive IrLsh-American brogue out of it. Indeed, the light literature of the melting pot era in American life would practically disappear en masse. Abe and Mawruss would have to be rebaptized as Abraham and Morris or Maurice. Milt Grosss Nlze Baby would have to be lifted clean out of the Bronx. Beyond these changes there would have to be many others. Shakespeaies Merchant of Venice would somehow have to be redone without the character of Shy-lock. The Bible itself would have to be purged of certain lusty passages.

Then there are the history books themselves. There are unfortunate references to R e d Coats and lobsterbacks in our accounts of the American Revolution. Surely these references must offend our British cousins. Southerners spoke slightingly of Abolitionists in the Eighteen Fifties, and the Abolitionists replied in kind. Surely any record of disparaging remarks on both sides must be eliminated in order to preserve sectional harmony today.

This columnist is not against reasonable restraints; he doesn't think the exploits of Lady Chatterley should be made a subject for classroom discussion. But when a teacher Is fired (as recently happened in Georgia) for assigning John Hersey's hannless and sentimental A Bell for Adano to 13-year-olds because it contains a few cuss words that boys and girls leara when they are in the first or second grade, the ridiculousness of the situation is manifest. The world would be a much healthier place today If people would

(a) develop thicker skins and

(b) if they would stop trying to wrap their children in cotton batting. This does not mean that both parents and school teachers should cease to stress the moral virtues. It does mean that they should try to recover the sort of preservative sense of humor that was commonplace twenty or thirty years ago.

NEW YORK AP) - Some people like to look ahead. But we all like to look back.

One of the nice things about the past is that we know it cant get any worse a thing we can't say for sure about the future. As a matter of fact, seen through the haze of reminiscence, the past gets rosier all the time to most of us. We recall it with a grow'ing fondness.

You can qualify for membership in the old-timers league if you can remember when

No working man ever bought

a suit with only one pair of

pants.

Parents never had to think up things for their children to do. A boy could keep himself amused all afternoon knocking tin cans off the backyard fence with a slingshot.

A child that dared to sass his daddy or mother usually couldn't sit comfortably even' on a pillow for the next three days.

A person was bom either a Democrat or a Republican and expected to stay one or the

Other Editors Saying. Many Ifs Involvec.

(Washington Daily News)

There are so many ifs involved right now In the Democratic political picture in regard to the next gubernatorial campaign that one can get lost pretty easy in this game of political star-gazing.

In the gubernatorial election of 1960, Terry Sanford carried 73 counties in North Carolina, whlle Robert Gavin, his Republican opponent, carried 27 counties. Then we might look at another interesting figure. Of the 73 counties carried by Governor Sanford, 21 of them were carried by a margin of less than 1,000 votes.

In 1%0 the Democrats had gone through two bitter primary campaigns. In the first primary John Larkins and Malcolm Seaweil were eliminated. The second primary was between Mr. Sanford and Dr. Beverly Lake. It was a bitter campaign, and Mr. Sanford won out. But the scars were left when the general election came in November. I960, it appeared that many citizens of the state who had voted in Ijoth Democratic campaigns then crossed political lines and voted for Mr. Gavin. Terry Sanford won nut by a margin of approximately 121,000 votes.

But in 1956 Luther Hodges beat his Republican opponent by a margin of better than two to one. In 1952 William Umstead beat his Republican opponent by better than two to one. In 1948 Kerr Scott won out over his Republican opposition by a margin of better than two and one half to one. In 1940 Melville Broughton had beaten his Republican opponent by better than three to one.

Thus, if we look at figures, in a period of 20 years the Democratic majority had slipped from better than three to one to a margin of 54 percent to 46 percent. In 1960 almost 1.-350,000 votes w'ere cast in North Carolina.

Now if we look at political history over the past 20 years In North Carolina in relation to the next gubernatorial race next

year, we can see why It Is so Important for the Democrats to be united and to have a strong candidate. _

Lisofar as publicity is concerned, there is only one Republican candidate in the field. He is Congressman Charles R. Jonas. Republicans all over North Carolina are today pointing to him as the man who can lead the Republican part in our state to victorj. He ha.s not said he will nin, but we hardly see how he can keep from doing so in view of the noise all the Republican drum beaters are now making in his behalf.

Now the Democrat.s are talking in terms of a primary with the three leading prospects being Bert Bennett. Dr. Henry Jordan, and Dr. Beverly Lake. If right now we could suppose that these three would hook up In a Democratic primary, then we could almost predict a second primary. In that second pri-marv' either Mr. Bennett or Dr. Jordan would be oppo."ing Dr. Lake, After that .second primary It Is an almo.st Inescapable fact that a lot of .scars would be left, and that the.se scars would carry over to the general election. It has been said that both Dr. Jordan and Mr. Bennett will not be in the running even in the first primary. But if one hacks out and does not nin. there most likely would be some candidate in the field.

With this picture in mind, it becomes ever more imperative that the Democrats plan wisely now, build carefully, and work harder than ever before. To minimize the candidacy of Mr. Jonas will be to play political suicide. We must recognize power when we come face to face with it.

First of all, as Democrats, we must try to avoid as much bitterness as possible. We must sll both our party and our candidates. We must take the political offensive and keep it.

It is going to take a lot of work, a lot of thought, and a lot of determination. The Democrats have their work cut out for them.

In

A Carlsbad man reports he has a car so old that this year he asked the Motor Vehicle Department for upper and lower plates. Instead of front and rear.Carlsbad Current Argus.

The rash of hikers, attempting to demonstrate their physical fitness by hiking 50 miles, demonstrates their mental unfitness. They are slightly daft. Plainview (Tex) Herald.

other all his life. Anjone who switched political parties was suspected to be lacking In character.

You could go through half your life without fUling out a government form.

Women went through the whole day w'earlng the same face they woke up with in the morning. They didnt have to paint on a new one every time they stepped out the front door.

A wile's standing in the community was measured by the quality of her apple pies.

People were bom and died in their own homes. You only went to the hospital when you had to have your appendix taken out.

A juvenile delinquent was a boy under 15 who sneaked into the local barbershop to read The Police Gazette.

Everything was cooked in lard, a substance with which young sports also slicked dowm their hair before going out on a date.

Clara Bow was known as the It girl of the movies. Only biim.s and hobos cooked their meals out of doors.

The mini.ster was thought to be shirking his duty if his Sunday seiTuon lasted less than a full hour.

The height of sophisticated repartee was to remark of something, That's the catf meow!''

You couldn't get through most high schools without learning some Latin.

No young girl careful of her reputation w'ould be seen sitting in the rumble scat of an auto with a young man.

When you saw a woman with a good figure, you knew it was a miracle of nature not the manufacturer s art.

Only the banker's .son got an allowance. Every other kid in town stai'ted earning his own spending money at the age of 12.

Yes, those were the days, Remember?

Ooinions

What goes up must coma downif It can solve the rm entry problem,John Ciardi.

Where All The Hela Is

By JOHN ABNEY MEXICO CITY We have a prety awful situation in the city these days and a lot of house-\rives complain there arent enough servants to go around.

The hardest hit section Is Lomas de Chapultepec where all the mansions are, and a friend of ours In Lomas Is thinking of moving to a smaller place because she has only four servants.

The two chamber maids are tied up all day with the upstairs bedrooms, baths, halls and sitting rooms, she said. The nurse has her hands full with the children and the laundress never gets more than three feet away from the washing machine and Ironing board We have to drive half a mUe to a restaurant for our meals. Now the reason for this crisis seems to be all the new businesses and Industries that keep opening everywhere. They hire people right and left and anyone who can do more than boil water gets a job.

It has even hit our household and we are down to two servants now. Things have become so critical that last night at supper I had to reach for the salt three times.

Twenty . five years ago when Mexico City was a viUage of just a little more than a million inhabitants, ladies rapped constantly on your door to ask if you needed a cook or something.

A good cook cost you about $5 a month then and they knew how to appreciate a better way of Uvlng. Today they average around $24 a month and complain about lousy meat cuts you serve. But like the Lady from Puebla pointed out. we are now pushing toward six miUl(Mi persons in the city and you can't keep people barefooted forever.

And the government has been lousing up things by opening more schools and raising the standard of living.

Apparently hwsewlves saw the handwriting on the wall several years ago. They had architects build houses with big kitchens and modem equipment. Before that, kitchens consisted of a stove, sink and a refrigerator in a nook where only servants entered.

W'ell, a couple of months ago we had three maids and it was a reasonable existence up to a certain point. The trouble wa.s, they weren't sjmchroolzed with my thinking.

I would get up in the morning and find the downstairs deserted.

What's going on? I would ask the Lady from Puebla. I dont hear any kids screaming nor maids giggling. In fact, the place Is empty ju.st when I am ready for breaWast.

So the Lady would say. All the older ones have gone to school and the nurse has taken the babies over to the park " And I would say, That's no excuse. Where s the cook? Up In her room putting rollers on her hair, the Lady would answer. I cant call her down yet. It's only eight o'clock, Then I would say. "All rieht wheres the bedroom maid? She can fry eggs.

She's helping the cook put the rollers on. " the Lady would say. Why dont you go back to sleep for a while?

Then I would go into the business about paying wages plus room and board and with a house full of servants, daughters and a wife I expected breakfast without haggling for It But the Lady from Puebla knew when she was well off and refused to utter a work except, Youre still living In the middle ages, fatso. Go back to sleep.

Finally I hid the cooks rollers and she got mad and went to work for one of the new supermarkets.

Since that day, guess who has been doing the cooking? And Its disgusting the way the ladles set up a clamor when meals arent sensed on time and everything isnt seasoned just right.

Quote

President Kennedy said we should not ask what our country can do for us. but what we can do for our conutry. It is wondered how many of us are doing things for our country that aren't compulsory. Hertford County Herald.

California And Six Key Words

Strength For Today

By E.\RL L. DOUGLASS FREEDO.M

Basic political freedom consists In the right of people to choose the form of government under w'hich they will live. If people want to live under communism they have a right to do so, provided they are given a choice to accept or reject communism. The unforgivable evil of communism, however, is that it does not give such an opportunity. It moves in with tanka and soldiers and takes over. There are many ways that c(m-immism violates freedom but in no wray so much as its over-w'helming unwillingness to allow people to choose communism or reject it.

The word liberty comes from a Sanskrit woixl which means to grow up. Liberty is the opportunity we have to grow.

We of the free countries prize tills above life. When Patrick Henry, almost two hundred years ago, cried out. Give me liberty or give me death, he expressed the sentiments of generations that would follow. We should all rather die, and have our loved ones die with us, thEin to be denied liberty.

The greatest force working for liberty is, and always has been, the true Christian spirit. There have been times when the Church has obstructed freedom. Today all branches of the Christian Church want to see men free to live their lives as they choose to live them. There are many grades and variations of religious Uberty but true religious liberty urges men to be free on the Inside of their lives, to accord freedom to others, to seek to establish freedom upon the earth.

By ELMER ROESSNER

California, it claims and no Rockefeller has denied it, is now larger In population than New York State. It has been larger than New York in area ever since it was admitted into the Union in 1850. And now it is trying to outstrip New York-just as it has outstripped dozens of other statesin industrial production.

The climate? It was Important. helping to offset the smog and the high taxes. The bountiful aid to the poor and the old? It helped. There were many other factors.

But one that has been largely overlooked Is a little legend that has been carried in national advertising for the first half of this century. It read: Slightly higher west of the Rockies.

It appeared tn advertisements for almost aU goods distributed nationally. It warned customers on the Pacific slope that they would have to pay a little more because o high transportation

co.sts from the Industrial East. SET MEN THINKING

These .six little words alei-t-ed shoppers that a hand-turning ice cream freezer that was sold at $2.50 In Fort Wayne might cost $2.75 at San Jose.

But other people read those W'ords too. They were the ones Who brought people and who arc bringing industrial prosperity to California and to other states west of the Rockies.

First, perhaps, it was a little fellow who made wooden buckets. So. he thought, if buckets cost slightly more west of the Rockies, why shouldnt I go west and start a new bucket business?

Slightly higher west of the Rockies, the legend ran. So a mail who made boilers nodded and moved from Peoria to San Pedro. A man who had a scrap steel wUl move it from St. Louis to Los Angeles. And so It went.

Slightly higher west of the Rockies, began as an apology and became one of the great

est stimulants to new business the country has ever seen. RECALDS CHILDHOOD When I was a tad In California, I used to point out the line to older people and ask If that was hurting the state. They smiled and said they thought not.

And through the years it became a beacon, an invitation and a chsdlcnge to businessmen throughout the East.

Today, few companies advertise that their product is slightly higher west of the Rockies. They know that in all the Western States similar or even better products are being offered at lower prices than Easterners can export them.

The Kaiser aluminum and steel empire flourished, partly because of the patronage of the Democratic AdministraU<Hi and partly because aluminum and steel used to be slightly higher west of the Rockies.

THE BIG SHELTER Autos are being assembled, tires molded, electronic devices made, and an endless number of

plastic product* produced on the West Coast because transportation costs from the East give the makers a working margin. A company can make an appliance in Southern California at higher cost than an Eastern rival and still undersell that rival because the Westerner Is sheltered by the high transcontinental freight rates.

Furniture manufacturers are starting regional assembly plants In the West to cut freight costsand to compete with Western firms.

In fashions. West Coast couturiers have triple advantage over Eastern rivals. They have a freight advantage. They understand better what their customers want. And they sincerely believe that they are better designer* than those in New Yoi4c or Parts.

Someday s(xne<me ought to ferret out the name of the little ad writer who first inserted the legend, Slightly higher west of the Rockies. The Weet owes him a Tnnmimpn^