Thanksgiving Amid Troubles

Today is Thanksgiving, a unique holiday in our nation.

No doubt this year we can all find reasons as to why there is little to be thankful for. Many able bodied people are unemployed, inflation is cutting into the luxuries of life for all of us and we cant always afford everything we want in the super markets.

In the world, trouble cwitinues to grow in the Middle East, and we are all aware of stories about starving people in less affluent areas of the world.

But we must remember that there has never been a Thanksgiving when there werent troubles for the people of our nation. The 1930s saw hard times for almost evei7body. During the 1940s there was World War II which brought pain and suffering to so many homes and shortages of goods far beyond anything we know today.

The 1950s saw our young men marching off to the Korean Conflict. In the 1960s there was Vietnam

THIS AFTERNOON

and much internal strife for our nation. Through it all, the American people have reinforced their resolve and we have gone on to build a better nation.

Now in the 1970s we have seen a president and a vice president resign from office in disgrace. We have seen unprecedented inflation and the beginnings of a recession that threatens our very way of life. The present day problems are very immediate to all of us and at times they seem insurmountable.

It hasnt been very popular for some years to talk about everyone doing their part to help bring the nation through its time of troubles. Yet here in 1974 that is what we are going to have to do if we are to maintain the quality of life in our nation.

Today we should first give thanks for all the things that we have. Then each of us should resolve to do our part to make this a better nation in the year ahead. We are still a great nation and if we use what we have to best advantage there will be many happy Thanksgivings in the future.

Electricity Rates Shitted

By BILLNOBLITT

RALEIGHThe net effect of a major shift of philosophy regarding electricity rates in North Carolina signaled by the utilities Commission in its recent Duke Power Co. decision has far-reaching implications both at the present, and in future years.

Boiled down to its simplest form, that decision takes off the low-use residential customer and puts on the high-use industrial customer a fairer share of the cost of electricity.

The results of this action are at least two:

The big users, especially those with a poor-load factor which means they make a heavy demand for electricity at times, use little at others, will pay much nearer a fair rate compared with other users.

Industrial users who have wasted electricity over the years because of its low cost and the wholesale rate they enjoyed will now be encouraged to take stringent conservation steps which some power experts think could easily save from 10 to 15 per cent in the average in-

INSIDE REPORT

stallation.

Future Direction

The key question, of course, is whether the Duke decision will affect other power companies in the stateand whether it will hold for future decisions as well.

Utilities Commission insiders think it will. They view the rate structure ruling a major shift in philosophy for the commissioners. The ruling was written in such a way to make clear that the commissioners have concluded that there must be conservation of electricity in this state, and that millions of dollars in heavy construction programs must be contained, if electrical rates are to be held to manageable levels.

Gov. James E. Holshouser Jr., stung recently by public and press criticism that he has attempted to dictate commission policy in some other casesnotably the Milk Commissionsaid he would not put himself in the position of spelling out what he thinks the Utilities Commission attitude ought to be.

Holshouser said he would not be surprised to see that pattern continued in the future . . . but will not make

any recommendations in that direction.

Historic Change

The governor said he feels the far-reaching impact of the Duke decision has been largely overlooked by the public, terming it one of historic proportions in North Carolina, and a major change in direction for now, and in the future.

Duke was seeking a $63 million overall increase; asking an across-the-board 16.5 per cent hike.

The new rate structure ordered by the commission, however, means that 122,000 customers using less than 350 killowatt hours monthly (small homes or apartments normally occupied by couples or single prople who use electricity for lights and cookingaverage monthly

bill in neighborhood of $10) will not pay any increase; between 350 killowatt hours and 1300 killowatt hours, less than the full increase will be paid.

The poor-load industries which require extensive equipment and service installations, but only use peak power sporadically, will pay

hikes up to 25 per cent. Cood-load industrial and commercial users, received the requested 16.5 per cent hike.

Commission Attorney Edward B. Hipp noted that those faced with the big increase can likely readjust circuits, spread out use, and take conservation measures to trim the hike, and that while the rate reversal was not deliberately taken to get some users to cut down, it has that effect.

The Utilities Commission has already tried the rate hike requested for Carolina Power and Light Co., trial is upcoming for Virginia Electric and Power Co. which serves some northeastern areas.

Industrial users buy more than a third of the power in North Carolina (16.7 million killowatt hours annually in 1972); residences use a quarter (11.7 million killowatt hours); and commercial users buy 7.9 million killowatt hours. Another 11.9 million killowatt hours are sold for resalesuch as to city-owned utilities; and 5.4 million killowatt hours are exported to neighboring states.

Reagan In A Passive Role

By ROWLAND EVANS ad ROBERT NOVAK SACRAMENTO. Calif.-Gov. Ronald Reagan, his recent notions of leading a new political party crushed by vital financial backers, has abandoned even shrouded plans for challenging President Ford in 1976 either inside or outside the Republican party.

Most Reagan advisers and probably Reagan himself now believe Mr. Ford really will seek a full presidential term as he promises. I think its all over for us, laments one Reagan insider. If so, Mr. Fords early announcement of candidacy has fulfilled a major purpose.

Nevertheless, melancholy in Sacramento is no cause for unrestrained jubilation within the Ford White House. Reagan does not dismiss the possibility that Mr. Fords record will be so bad by 1976 that he will have to abandon his candidacy ; Reagan then

would be the most probable nominee. Furthermore, Mr. Fords prospects for success may not be enhanced by Reagans intended public role as an ideological policeman to direct the Ford administration into conservative orthodoxy.

But this passive role was not what Reaganites envisioned only a month ago when they felt Mr. Ford, his political stock dropping after the Nixon pardon and the hospitalization of his wife, would not run. That certainly seemed Reagans view after returning from national barnstorming for Republican candidates in September and early October.

While lionized at

Republican rallies, Reagan noticed a strange

phenomenon: the name of Gerald R. Ford was never mentioned at these partisan events. When Reagan and his aides compared notes after rallies, they agreed there

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really seemed to be no incumbent Republican President; it was as though a Democrat were in office.

This perception of Mr. Ford as a transitional figure was vaulting Reagan over the highest psychological hurdle to a 1976 challenge. What friends call Reagans veneration for the presidency impelled him into baseless defenses of Richard M. Nixon; so, he could not really be expected to oppose an incumbent Republican President. But if politicians perceived Mr. Ford as merely transitional, not really an incumbent, it might be different.

Contrary to denials, a possible new conservative party was indeed discussed within the Reagan inner sanctum. Other California Republicans say the principal source of third-party notions were two Reagan aides; Robert Walker, a tough, experienced political (xx> and top Reagan adviser since 1968. and Jeff Bell, a smart young political theoretician hired last summer to plan Reagans fall travels.

But when Reagan publicly voiced inner sanctum third-party musings in his Oct. 15 Sacramento press conference. conservative Republican politicians in California and elsewhere relayed dismay That in

cludes California Republican money men who are not only Reagans benefactors but his most influential advisers. The most potent; millionaire Los Angeles auto dealer Holmes Tuttle, a staunchy loyalist Republican who urged the governor to abandon third-party talk.

He did so quickly in a preelection interview with U.S. News and World Report. That still left the possibility of Reagan running for the 1976 Republican nomination. But the chilly Ford-Reagan relationship was considerably warmed by the Presidents ingratiating approach at a Los Angeles summit between them Oct. 31. Besides, all key Reagan advisers believe that nomination would not be worth having if Reagan had to battle an incumbent President in 25 state primaries. Thus, Mr. Fords announcement after the Nov. 5 election that he definitely would run in 1976 extinguished residual hopes in the Reagan camp.

Tuttle now talks privately of watchful waiting with no attempts to build a national organization. Walker and Bell will leave Reagans staff when he ends two terms as governor Jan. 6. The two Reagan political operatives with the best national con-(Continued on page 5)

Okay, llic jiw* ii|i. Ma! \^Vn* going to ring tlie Bell on you/

By JAMES J. KILPATRICK

A Dubious Amendment

The November election returns brought forth a cheery prediction from the League of Women Voters; The Equal Rights for Women Amendment, better known as ERA, will at last become part of the (Constitution in 1975.

It may be so. If the pending amendment does manage to win valid and untainted ratifications from 38 States, it would become operative two years later. Perhaps 100 years of litigation would then commence, as courts and legislatures undertook to discover what the amendment had done to our law.

The troublesome thing about this amendment is that no informed observer has any

clear idea about what the ERA in fact would accomplish. The amendment says merely that equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex. One has to look back to the Fourteenth Amendment, just after the Civil War, to find a constitutional amendment of such uncertain meaning.

The Fourteenth provided, among other things, that no State could deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. More than a century later, the courts still are finding meanings in the Fourteenth that its framers and ratifiers never knew they

Other Editors Say Two Down

(Greensboro Daily News)

Senator Walter F. Mondales decision not to run for the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination comes as a surprise, particularly this early in the game.

It is early, really, to be hearing anything about a campaign sixteen or eighteen months away, but ever since George McGovern announced his candidacy about this far ahead of the 1972 convention, and won the nominatioa it has become canon that no time is too early to announce. And now Fritz Mndale is withdrawing early, on the heels of Senator Edward Kennedy, thus leaving very few serious contenders on the liberal side of the party still in the race.

We hate to see Mr. Mndale go His name has been offered up for years as one of the comers in the Democratic party, and until his announcement the other day it was widely prophesied that he would be in the top four or five when the nomination came down to the wireas it looks like it will da It is no CMn-cidence that Arizona Rep. Morris Udall has been making steady progress as a liberal standard-bearer, particularly in New Hampshire, where the traditional first primary takes place; Senator Mndale conceded that the Udall factor played a part in his decision, and Mr. Udall has since announced his candidacy the first Democrat to do sa The flurry on the left is not all; Senator Jackson will surprise no one when he naakes formal announcement in January of a candidacy which has been building for years and years; Texas Senator Bentsen will reportedly follow suit; and even a long-shot like Georgias retiring governor, Jimmy Carter, is preparing to throw his hat into the ring next month.

We admittedly apprehensive about the prospects of almost two solid years of presidential campaigning, and by all accounts. so was Senator Mndale, who said simply that he did not have the overwhelming desire to be President Brava

put there. Under the Fourteenth, the doctrine of state action has been extended to all kinds of essentially private action. It seems apparent that the same freewheeling construction would be applied to ERA.

Other constitutional amendments have functioned as rifle shots, not as blunderbuss explosions. The Fifteenth and Nineteenth, for example, applied narrowly and precisely to the right to vote. The pending ERA, by contrast, applies to rights generally. If proponents want the word rights to be interpreted as treatment, and apparently they do, they may get more than they have bargained for.

Consider, if you will, an essentially frivolous point. It is a fair assumption that virtually every State and locality have a law against indecent exposure. For good or ill, these statutes reflect the mores of the people; and for good or ill, people still take the laws seriously. Cocoa Beach, Fla., just held a referendum on topless bathing by women, and voted the proposition down.

Now, if men have a right to go topless on the beach, once the ERA became operative no State could deny the same right to women. All of us dirty old men may yell hooray, but is this what the people want? Multiply the example by one million more serious examples, and one begins to have second thoughts.

In any event, proponents will be pushing hard next year for ratification in North Dakota, North Carolina, Illinois, and Missouri. Other likely opportunities are seen in Florida, Nevada, Indiana, Oklahoma,and possibly in Arizona. At the mement, 33 ^States have positively ratifies ERA; two others, Nebraska and Tennessee, have voted to ratify and then voted to rescind their ratifications.

4.000 Dinners

llToday

^ By JAMES O. CLIFFORD Q SAN FRANCISCO (UPI) -K Father Floyd Lotito expects

4.000 persons for dinner Thanksgiving and again on CTiristmas.

The Franciscan priest and his colleagues at St. Anthony Dining Room, which recently served its 11 millionth free meal to the needy, take such crowds in stride.

I guess we are probably the biggest dining room of its type, Father Lotito said.

I certainly dont know of one bigger. I remember once that; the news media made a big deal over a hall in New York serving 1,700 meals one Christmas. Thats what we serve every day.

Annual food requirements for. St. Anthony are huge, including

100.000 pounds of meat and

100.000 pounds of potatoes.

All of the dining rooms support comes from thousands of individual donors and volunteer workers. It receives no help from city, state or federal govemmit, nor from the Archdiocese of San Francisco or the Franciscan Order. Something moves these peo^ pie to help St. Anthony month after month, year after year, said Father Alfred Boeddeker< the dining rooms executive director who founded the facility 24 years ago.

Perhaps, its something that says: Just do it once more. ; So much is often wasted on administration. Most of our assistance goes directly to the poor.

The priest said St. Anthony Dining Room began in a former machine shop and with the help of trade union members it was transformed into a modern cafeteria. Donations were made by food retailers, producq market brokers and food companies. ;

Father Lotito, the deputy executive director, said the dining room has been hit by the coiaitrys economic troubles. !

About a year ago we noticed that the daily number of diners jumped about 500, with the majority elderly and many more women.

He said the stereotype of the average diner as an alcoholic no longer holds, if indeed it ever did.

We found out years ago that only 23 per cent fell into the alcoholic class and that is 'Continued on page 5)

40 Years Ago Today

November 28,1934

The city school system suspended work at noon today for the observance of the Thanksgiving holidays. Work will begin again Monday.

Three teachers, Mrs. C. A.! Bowen, Miss Mary York and Vester Mulholland, went to; Washington, D. C. to attend the National English Con- ference during the holiday.

East Carolina Teachers (Allege also suspended work , at noon to give students an opportunity to spend the holidays with relatives.

The Daily Reflector will suspend publication tomorrow for the observance of Thanksgiving.

It has always been the custom of the paper to suspend publication on this date, and all departments will be closed to give employees a chance to take part in the local celebration.

Work will resume Friday and the regular edition will appear in the afternoon as usual.

Susan Price

Strength For Today To Cranberry Claim

O J By D.WIEL Q. HANEY predicted that Wisconsins the emercenrp nf Wic/vwiein ____

TO W IN A CROW N

The Bible frequently refers to salvation as the conferring of a crown.

Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee the crown of life. Ye shall receive the crown of life which the Lord hath promised to them that love him Or thoee words which Paul spoke just before his death: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day: and

not to me only, but to all them also that love his appearing So let us not think of death in terms of sorrow It is not the ending, it is the beginning. It is not the closing of a door, but the opening of celestial gates. Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of God. and he shall go out no more; and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God . . .and I will write upon him my new name.

by Elisba Deaglass

By DANIEL Q. HANEY Associated Press Writer PLYMOtTR Mass. (AP) Massachusetts, where the Pilgrims picked cranberries 350 years ago. is still the nations leading producer of the red holiday berries. But Wisconsin is challenging that claim.

Cranberries are as much a part of Thanksgiving as turkey and pumpkin pie, and as of the first of November, the bogs of Cape Cod and the Plymouth area produced 985.000 barrels of them. Elarlier this year, it was

predicted that Wisconsins crop would surpass Massachusetts for the first time. But in September, during the prime growing season, temperatures there dropped to nine degrees. So the berries were plentiful but small.

Wisconsins crop this year is about 840,000 barrels, while New Jerseys is 240,000 and Washingtons 100,000.

In Massachusetts, where agriculture barely exists, being the biggest cranberry producer is a matter of pride. Fanners are not happy about

the emergence of Wisconsin as a cranberry power.

Even though Wisconsins crop was smaller than expected this year, it was still 25 per cent larger than the harvest in 1973.

Development of new cranberry bogs is at a standstill in Massachusetts. The industry is located in the middle of a popular vacation area, and the land is more profitable as house lots. In Wisconsin, new land is <tfin available for growing the berries.

Dr. Oiester Cross, director

of the industrys e; perimental station i Wareham, said he thougl Massachusetts would remai dominant for several year because its ocean climal makes it less apt to ha^ sudden temperatiare change As with most fan products, the price < cranberries has risen ov the past year. The wholesal price of a one-pound box wit a plastic window was 27 ceni *ast year and is 30 cents thi November, accordii^ to th U.S. Department of Agr culture.