The News-Herald from Franklin, Pennsylvania • Page 4

I Just When the Traffic Gets Heavy The News -Herald Observer 1 Si Convertible 1 Saturday, August 7, 1971 EDITORIAL School secrecy By RUSSELL BAKER i Public uneasiness over the threatened strike by teachers in the Franklin Area School District is a natural consequence of practically a total lack of information about the situation. The most the public knows is that negotiations were held early this year between the teacher association and the district regarding a new contract. An impasse was reached, brief attempts by the state at mediation failed and the teachers set a strike date to coincide with the start of the 1971-72 school term. However divided they are about the contract details, the negotiators easily arrived at an agreement about one thing to keep the public in the dark about what the negotiations are all about. At the very start, the teachers and district agreed that negotiations would be private and that both sides would refrain from issuing any statement until negotiations are concluded.

Both sides have indicated they were unhappy with the experience of several years ago when negotiations were accompanied by news releases. This, they felt, resulted in becoming a "fight in the newspaper." It occurs to us that the more private the negotiations become, the more unreasonable one or both sides can become. Public awareness of the issues involved would produce public opinion and pressure that could have a bearing on solution. It is probably public pressure the negotiators nope lo a. void rather than the mechanics of a "fight In the newspapers." A pattern of private negotiations has developed in industrial labor relations in recent years in contrast to the days when demands and offers were freely announced.

Secrecy hasn't increased their success, and in some instances uninformed union membership has refused to go along with settlement terms. The public may not have the right to know about issues in private industry, but there can be no denying its right to know what is, involved in a dispute which threatens to close a public school system. Parents, taxpayers and the students have too much at stake to allow school officials and teacher bargainers to keep these matters to themselves. Both sides show an unhealthy distrust of the public while at the same time supposedly serving the public. Since the negotiators were able to agree against making separate statements about the issues, maybe they could agree on drafting an informative joint statement about the progress they are making and the problems they are having.

The public has a right to know by now why this strike threat remains as school days approach. If the negotiators acknowledged this right, they might discover that the process of providing information would dissolve some of their differences. Editor's Clip Board 5 Still a nlcklo The result has been the triumph of the airplane, the motel and the air-conditioned-car-bearing turnpike, which enables us to roll through the center of town with the windows sealed so that nobody can hear us baa and moo. But what is this? somebody will ask. The whinings of one of those fascist liberal elitists? Does anyone truly think that things were better before herd economics made it possible for every last child in America to travel to Europe overnight and clot the streets of Paris with more blue jeans than flies on a jelly roll? Not at all, maybe.

The question here is simply, what do the rich get out of being rich any more? And before anyone writes in to answer "tax loopholes," "Invitations to the White House," "medical attention," and so forth be on notice that all such answers, adding up to the trite statement that the rich get richer, are not to the point. The question is, if you prefer, what do the rich get out of getting richer? It has always seemed that the chief pleasure of being rich would consist in living in a fashion that made no sense, at least in the American definition. Certainly, this living style would embrace ownership of a convertible, for use on that rare immemorial day in May. It would also, surely, mean, when visiting another city, not having to stay in some inexpressibly totalitarian motel cell breathing all that tired old used air and trying to get the television set to work, but having an oak-paneled hotel so formidable that touring Presidential candidates would be barred by the doorman and pearls might turn up in the oysters. Who can possibly care any more about being rich if the day comes, as soon as it almost certainly will, when a trip abroad means not a long sea voyage and a tuning down of the nerves but a connonball ride in a sealed metal container that hurls you from utter desperation in New York to absolute exhaustion in Rome? These decisions to eliminate anything in the world that makes life better must be made by rich people, for rich people are the only kind of people who could possibly own airlines, motels, automobile companies and turnpike-building machinery.

Why on earth do it? Is it out of simple preference for the herd life? Or is it to keep their profligate children from having anything conspicuous to do? Or could It be that the only thing that is truly any fun any more for the rich man is paying an absurd price for a European painting so that he can make another tax saving, get richer and sit around complaining to his wife that since they quit making convertibles life isn't any fun any more? There was an item In the paper the other day about the passing of the convertible. An open car, it appears, makes no sense any more even for the rich. On hot days they prefer turning on the air-conditioner to peeling back a roof. This has something to do with the usually loathsome consistency of the outside air in much of the country, but the more compelling consideration may be the turnpike speeds at which cars commonly travel nowadays. At 70 miles an hour, a ride in an open convertible is something like flying in an open-cockpit airplane.

In any event, the convertible, which once played a big part in every boy's dream of the sweet, soft, decadent, sin-ridden life, is about through. Chrysler has quit making them, and Ford and General Motors may soon follow suit. All this, at least, is what the news story said. If you pause long enough to think about it, however, it doesn't really add up. What Detroit is saying is that the convertible doesn't make sense any more.

The flaw in the explanation is that the convertible never did make any sense. Its design was ridiculously dangerous. Visibility to the rear was poor with the roof up, and the roof was almost always up, either because the mechanism for lowering it was broken or because it was raining or freezing or so hot that the seat cushions could have fried hominy. The only justification for a convertible was as pure luxury for persons who enjoyed feeling conspicuous. On that rare day in May when all the elements of the good life were in rare conjunction the temperature just right, the sun at just the proper intensity or warmth, the woman in the passenger seat of stunning desirability, and the roof-lowering mechanism in one of Its infrequent working moods on such rare days the convertible earned Its upkeep, at least for the rich man or the poor foolish sybarite who owned one.

If the convertible made no sense then, why does it make less sense now? The true explanation for the decline of the convertible Is more interesting and more melancholy. In recent years there have been many related declines and disappearances. The ocean liner, the great hotel, the transcontinental passenger train, among others, have already gone down the road the convertible is now driving. None of them made any sense, at least In the American definition. Profit for the businessman and economy for his client lay In his treating people like cattle and In their persuading themselves that, well, after all, there was something to be said for belonging to a herd.

This would mark a full century of nickle phone service. They must really be behind the times in Wapakoneta, you say? Maybe so except that the western Ohio community also happens to be the hometown of Nell Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. Wapakoneta, Ohio, is one of the few places in the nation maybe the only place where you can still make a nickle pay phone call. It's actually a matter of pride with the local telephone company. A spokesman recently stated that no increase is planned.

In fact, they hope to be able to maintain the low rate at least until 1988. The Washington fiAehy-go-Round Hughes backs both By JACK ANDERSON By HARRIET R. BLEAKLEY enzymes. It had earlier been revealed that they created allergic conditions in some individuals. How long will it be before the United States follows the lead of many European countries that already prohibit the use of enzymes in laundry products? It will be soon, if we protest.

It will be long, if we remain apathetic. It should be noted that detergent producers sharply cut back on the use of enzymes following the furor over the revelation that they could cause allergies. Several enzyme-containing products still are on the market, however. Nutrition is another area where the average consumer is frequently deceived. Many highly advertised foods have next to no food value.

Much of what we eat is a detriment to good health. A book selling like hot cakes these days is Adelle Davis's Let's Eat Right to Keep Fit. Some individuals pooh-pooh the Davis thesis, but many nutritionists and physicians endorse it. I have tried much of what she recommends and, for me, it has meant more energy and less fatigue. Americans are frequently described as a malnourished lot.

Davis believes it Is our responsibility to change this. She doesn't think much, for example, of the typical-starchy school lunch and tells of a friend who for five years planned menus and frequently supervised lunch preparations in an elementary school cafeteria. She obtained fresh vegetables, often organically grown, and saw that they were quickly steamed or baked, never allowing their flavor to be robbed by soaking or boiling. Finger salads were served dally. Meat loaves, soups and casserole dishes were fortified with powdered milk, wheat germ, rice polish and yeast.

Fish, for example, was brushed with mayonnaise, rolled in wheat germ and baked. All bread was made daily of stone-ground, wholewheat flour; it was so delicious that parents soon reported their children refused the white styrofoam variety served at home. Medically certified raw milk was used. Honey was used instead of sugar. Usually dessert was fresh fruit, cheese and dates.

Occasionally spice cake, home-made cookies, or sweet muffins were made with whole-wheat and soy flour, rice polish, wheat germ and powdered milk. Any child coming to school without breakfast was allowed homemade bread, butter and milk at the cafeteria. Not a penny went for trash foods or soft drinks. Well, this took a lot of planning. But it does sound better than the traditional sloppy joe, spaghetti, galloping-Guinea-pig-on-horse-back lunch.

Davis tells of another instance where a football team was served menus of her design rather than the regular school fare. The coach was delighted when the players developed greater endurance, were less short winded and less fatigued. They suffered fewer injuries and those which did occur healed faster. There were fewer practices missed and less school absence. Adelle Davis is a biochemist, not a nutritionist.

You may not buy everything she has to say. Her book isn't easy reading. But it's interesting and enlightening. Following her suggestions worked for me. Perhaps this is just a psychological reaction.

Whatever, it worked. Yikes! A food faddist yet! Seldom does a day pass that we don't read of another consumer item that is a potential hazard to human health. Many people have adopted the "what's the use" atUtude. "We can't do anything about it," they say, "so we Just ignore the whole thing." This is a good way to speed one's journey to the grave. And something can be done about It.

Write to your legislators. Write the Food and Drug Administration in Washington. Write the President. Form a consumer's group. Make a loud noise.

Put on the pressure. If enough people let it be known they will no longer be deceived by big business, something will be done. If we sit back and do nothing, the deceivers will continue to get away with, literally, murder. Insist that all labeling laws be improved. Food composition should be stated and all additives listed.

As it is, it's frightening to read a label and see listed the chemicals we now ingest. It is said that each American consumes an estimated three pounds of synthetic chemicals per year. The effect of the combinations of these chemicals in many instances has never been tested. Many food additives were used for years before it was discovered they were cancer-producing. Insist that preservatives be clearly stated on labels with full chemical names.

Reject innocent sounding abbreviations such as BHA and BHT. Insist that every soft drink label list all the ingredients used, including caffeine. Insist upon strict enforcement of sanitation regulations in places where foods are prepared. Americans are tired of reading about this or that well-known brand of candy containing rodent excrement, rodent hairs, insects or other revolting intruders. Think about some of the advertising claims being made for certain foods.

Only this week a letter-to-the-editor in The New York Times strongly protested the advertising implications of a new breakfast cereal. The composition of the cereal was primarily marshmallows certainly not desirable as a breakfast foor for several reasons, one of which is the damage this sweet can do to teeth. The damage inflicted upon the consumer is incurred by more than food. Everyone has read, for example, about the hazards of enzymes, but no one seems to pay much attention. I do, because if my clothes are washed with a substance containing the little creatures, I feel as if I am being eaten alive by a million crawling This is fortunate because now a product containing enzymes dare not darken my door.

Other people are not so susceptible, and may not be aware of the damage the substances are incurring. The Wall Street Journal recently carried a report that enzyme preparations used in detergents and other laundry products contain toxic substances that are potentially dangerous. These findings were revealed by Rene Dubos, a noted biologist at Rockefeller University. The scientist reported a series of experiments in which mice injected with the enzyme products rapidly lost weight and, in some cases, died. The enzyme products also appeared to enhance certain types of infections and to damage the blood.

Mr. Dobos full report appeared in Science magazine and added another possible health problem to the use of i 9 "i 3 ft of a Republican victory this year. "If that could be realized under our sponsorship and supervision every inch of the way, then we would be ready to follow with Laxalt as pur next candidate." Hughes used his gambling profits from the Silver Slipper to make political contributions. He owned the casino as a personal holding, therefore the money didn't pass through his corporate books. We have evidence that Silver Slipper money was slipped to a number of Nevada and national polticians.

In 1968, Maheu turned over $100,000 from the Silver Slipper to Danner, who delivered it to Nixon's close crony, Bebe Rebozo. The participants won't talk about the transaction. Responded Maheu tersely: "I have made it a matter of policy never to discuss political contributions on behalf of any client unless I have specific authorization in writing. In this case, I doubt whether the authorization would be forthcoming." Danner, who now runs the Sands hotel-casino for Hughes, refused to comment. And Rebozo wouldn't take our calls.

While Hughes was supporting Richard Nixon, he also courted Hubert Humphrey. The secretive billionaire hoped to use Humphrey, then Vice President, to stop nuclear testing in Nevada. "Bob," Hughes instructed Mahef, "there is one man who can accomplish our objective 22 years ago through (Lyndon) Johnson and that man is H.H.H. "Why don't we get word to him on a basis of secrecy that is really, really reliable that we will give him immediately full, unlimited support for his campaign to enter the White House if he will just take this one on for us?" Humphrey Helps Hughes The billionaire's secret, hand-scrawled instructions Indicate Humphrey's help had been secured. Hughes sought "an order from LBJ inspired by Humphries" to halt all Nevada testing or, at least, a 90-day delay to give him more time to prepare a case against the tests.

"I concur completely," Hughes wrote Maheu on April 16, 1968, "with telling the V.P. that he is free to tell the people in Washington if they don't grant the 90-day delay, I am going to the public immediately." He threatened to make public scientific opinions that the tests may have triggered an earthquake. "Bob," Hughes added, "I leave this whole campaign in your hands. I am sure you should personally go to the White House after we have obtained the 90-day delay and endeavor to sell the President on a permanent policy. I am sure H.H.H.

would be glad to go with you and to set up the appointment." Maheu suggested a personal message from Hughes to the President would be more effective. Replied Hughes oh April 24: "You know I am perfectly willing to write a short personal message to Johnson, which we could ask Humphries to deliver hand deliver to Johnson. "Or if we feel it would be more prudent, I could ask to deliver It. In that way, it need not interfere with anything Humphries has going. "I feel we must start a negotiation with the A.E.C.

just as If we were negotiating a business deal. I think we can go through Humphries." Humphrey, whose last name the billionaire could never get straight, acknowledged to us that he had opposed the Nevada tests. But he had taken this position, he said, before the approach from the Hughes people. LAS VEGAS The private paper of phantom billionaire Howard Hughes reveal how he attempted to manipulate both presidential candidates In 1968. Although the papers are still under court seal in Nevada, we have had access to them.

Here are the highlights: Hughes directed his former factotum, Robert Maheu, to help Richard Nixon win the presidency "under our sponsorship and supervision." Maheu allegedly siphoned off $100,000 from the Silver Slipper, a Hughes gambling emporium, for Nixon's campaign. The money was delivered by Richard Danner, a Hughes exec, to Bebe Rebozo, a Nixon confidante. -At the same time, Hughes suggested Maheu should "get word to (Hubert Humphrey) on a basis of secrecy that is really really reliable that we will give him immediately full, unlimited support for his campaign to enter the White House." An immediate $50,000 contribution was supposed to have been made. Although Humphrey heard Maheu had contributed to his campaign, there's no record the $50,000 was ever received. Hughes' lieutenants also offered to subsidize Larry O'Brien so he could serve without pay as Democratic National Chairman during the 1968 campaign.

Humphrey acknowledges the offer was made, and O'Brien confirms he was sounded out by Maheu in 1968. But both insist O'Brien never drew a dime from the Hughes Interests during the campaign. Several months later, however, he was retained by Hughes for a "substantial sum." Humphrey's son, Robert, was also employed by a Hughes company as a sales representative. Money on Nixon Hughes' startling strategy was to help elect Nixon as President in 1968, then to groom Nevada's articulate and attractive Gov. Paul Laxalt for the White House.

The fabulously rich recluse saw a Kennedy-like quality in Laxalt, who gave up the governorship this year. On March 14, 1968, Hughes Instructed Maheu: "I want you to go to see Nixon as my special confidential emissary. I feel there Is a really valid possibility Aug. 8, 1949 More than 100 guests attended the open house held Sunday afternoon in honor of Mr. and Mrs.

Clinton Runninger of Franklin RD 1, who will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary Aug. ,9. The reception was held at Terra Alta Farm, home of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Runninger.

Miss Priscllla Brady of Cincinnati, Ohio, is a guest of Mrs. H. S. Gahagan. Gus H.

May, Aaron W. Phinney, James H. Meckley and H. H. Vath have returned from a week's fishing trip to Ontario, Canada.

Mrs. Clarence L. Smith of Oil City and Mrs. Richard W. Kennedy and son, Craig, have returned from a week's stay at Chautauqua, N.Y.

Mr. and Mrs. William B. Cauvel and children, Mary Ann and Ernest, are enjoying a vacation trip to northern Wisconsin and Michigan. Mr.

and Mrs. Donald Plumer and daughter, Jean Marie, of Franklin, and Roland Phillips of Oil City, returned yesterday from a sojourn at Pensacola. BERRY'S WORLD THE NEWS-HERALD PUT Everything; Consolidation of FRANKLIN EVENING NEWS Established Feb. 1. U7I, By JAMES B.

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