The Emporia Gazette from Emporia, Kansas • Page 2

Page 4 THE GAZETTE, EMPORIA, KANSAS Bebhuuy 18, 1974 GAZETTE f( 0h, I'd Say It's Down About a Sixteenth of an Inch William Allen White, 1895 -1944 William Lindsay White, 1944 -1973 Glen Albert Bradshaw, Foreman Everett Ray Call, Managing Editor Marshall Seymour Ellis, Circulation Manager Jerald Franklin Trowbridge, Advertising Manager Paul David Walker, Assistant Publisher You know the commandments: (Mark 10:19) Do not Practical Advice A MERICANS continually are reminded to save fuel, but specific advice is scarce. Most of us do not waste fuel deliberately; we do it out of ignorance. Along comes the Con Edison company with a little pamphlet that offers some practical ways to save both fuel and money. Pirst of all, the pamphlet advises against the use of portable electric heaters, which are unsafe and expensive to run. An average- sized elecrric heater, operated 12 hours a day, could add $25 to the monthly bill.

Next, the pamphlet tells customers how to conserve enough energy to save a barrel of oil a year: 1. Turn off a light. Nineteen gallons of oil are needed to operate one ioo-watt bulb six hours a day for a year. 2. Use fluorescent lights where practical.

One 40-watt fluorescent tube puts out 3,100 lumens of light compared with only 1,750 lumens from a ioo-watt incades- cent bulb. 3. Turn off the television set no one is watching it. Eleven gallons of oil are needed to produce enough electricity to operate a color television set one hour a day for a year. 4.

Wait until your have a full load to run the washer, for obvious reasons. 5. Same with the clothes 6. Same with the dishwasher. 7.

Turn off air-conditioners when the house is empty for long periods. 8. When cooking don't use more flame than is needed; use the right size pan for the job; use covers on pots and pans when practical; use a pressure cooker if possible; cook two or more foods at the same time in the oven; don't open the oven door to peek in unnecessarily. The pamphlet gives this final advice: do not turn off pilot lights on gas cooking stoves, as some have suggested, to conserve fuel. It would not save much gas.

More important, it's dangerous. Pilot lights are a safety feature as well as a convenience. Homeowners who turn off -pilot lights run the risk of accidental burns, fires or explosions. Without pilot lights, gas may flow unignited from burners and accumulate in dangerous quantities. 1 1 1 There they are.

Some down-to- earth, practical tips that will help conserve fuel. R. C. From Marion Ellet: 'N other Gadget I WAS much interested in the letter a man wrote to Ann reporting that his wife him ta buy 7o-series for their car so that she can cracker crumbs easily and "quickly. It seems that some home- advice columnist had recommended that the best way to make cracker crumbs is to put a box of crackers in a plastic bag and then run over it with your car.

The husband "thinks rolling pin might suffice. But the poor benighted devil misses rhe point. In the first place the wife probably does not have a rolling pin. Why would she? There is no use for rolltne pins anv more unless the fern libs decide to use them on male chauvinist pigs. No knowledgeable housewife would use a rolling pin for dough.

You buy frozen biscuits and frozen pie crust. I'm nor. sure that it would be easy for any woman to buy a rolling pin. Not long ago I asked for a double boiler. The young sales girl at me blankly and said, "What's that?" I explained to her that it is a very useful kitchen utensil, that among other things you could use it for warming lefrovers without dehydrating them.

Then I had to explain to her what "dehydrating" means. That fairly easy: I didn't have so much luck with "leftovers." The word didn't seem fo register. She said she thought "that stuff" went into the disposal. Otherwise what was a disposal for? No. I did nor get the double boiler.

A conventional tetail store is not a good place in which to shop for rolling pins and double boilers. They are antiques along with your great-grandmother's iron pots. I'm sorry, but I don't think that husband has seen anything yet. What he will probably have ro do, eventually, is to buy at least one wide arrange to have it hung on the kitchen wall along with the electric can opener and the electric pencil sharpener. He'll have to arrange an electric device which will life the-tire from rhe wall and roll it along the floor so that crackers box and all can be completely pulverized.

Don't ask me how box crumbs are to be separated from cracker crumbs. That's another job for the gadgeteers. 20 'ears A go Feb. iSth, 1954 Water rationing was decreed for Emporia effective Feb. 27th.

The new ordinance was intended to curtail the use of city water and conserve the dwindling supply in Lake Kahola and the Neosho River. Banned was the sprinkling of lawns, watering of trees and shrubbery, washing cars, use of air-conditioners and evaporative coolers. Violators would be fined not more than $50 on conviction. The city was given authority to cut off violators' water sup- ply for a second violation. Two of the nation's most influential men in industry and retailing, both top-ranking officials of Montgomery-Ward stores, were Emporia business visitots Tuesday.

They were Sewell Avery, Chairman of the Board, and E. A. Krisler, President. Dale Forren was Lawrence attending a school of instruction at the University of Kansas, held under the auspices of the Kansas Restaurant of which he was president. 40 Years A go Feb.

iSth, 1934 In appreciation of financial support given to the College of Em- pana by citizens of Emporia, the college would award half-year tui- tions to students in the upper one-rhird in scholarship in the Senior Class of Emporia High School. Signs of spring crocuses were blooming in the Harry Dilworth yard at 1515 Merchant and the T. F. McDaniel yard at 1510 Rural St. Eureka The property of rhe Ranch Wild West Show shown at the Chicago fair in the summer, was sold.

It included five amj a Jtring ho wMch br()ught Em for a aca emy The clephants an equipment had gt Eute a jmce summer season was over. The Santa Fe was air-conditioning 89 passenger cars, to be ready for summer travel. Air-conditioning already had been installed 23 Santa Fe dining cars. Sixty Years Ago Voters would- be asked to consider a $75,000 bond issue for a combination city building and audi- To By Jeffrey Hart OBERT REDFORD on the cover of Newsweek striking a Gatsbylike pose in front of that yellow Rolls, rhe gorgeous Newsweek center-spread of color stills from the forthcoming film of The Great Gatsby these are but the latest indicators. Rock is out and people are raking lessons in the Charleston.

Bob Dylan's recent concert at Madison Square Garden, featuring 6os ballads, was self-consciously retrospective and elegiac. We are into a full-blown revival of the 19205 as a usable past and -point of reference. Why this sort of thing comes about is a little mysterious, bur as a matter of fact it happened once before, around 1949. The novels of Fitzgerald had long been out of print and he was scarcely considered to have been a serious writer at all. Then critics Edmund Wilson and Malcolm Cowley succeeded in directing attention to him, and all of a sudden books by and about Fitzgerald were cascading from the presses.

"The Great Gatsby" was recognized for what it actually is: an American classic, a triumph of art and insight, a great novel. And was not only Fitzgerald who was rediscovered. An entire array of Twenties writers and personalities came in for sympathetic and admiring attention. A Reaction Against The Past No doubt all this was a reaction against the immediate past. In 1949, Americans had come through rhe Depression and the Crusade in Europe, and for rhe rime being less said about them rhe better.

The Eisenhower years could look back wirh feelings of kinship to the years of the Coolidge prosperity. Ten vears later, around 1959, rhe radical moods of the 19605 were foreshadowed by a rediscovery of the 19305. James Agee was rediscovered, and Walker Evans's photographs of Appalachian' poverty. Michael Harrington, the rediscovered poverty in America, to the glee of many. Reading Harrington, you half expected to step over the corpses of the starving in the street outside your door.

Responding to this new mood, John F. Kennedy promised to "get America movm again, almost- as. he were succeeding not Eisenhower in 1960, but Herbert Hoover in 1930. During the 19605, the Negro movement provided a stand-in for the drive to organize labor in the 19305. Vietnam protest resembled in some ways the great sitdown strikes.

Intellectuals rediscovered Marx and Engels. and people like Herbert Marcuse rried to bring them up to date. Graduate srudents did dissertations on rhe. novels of John Steinbeck. Studs Terkel evoked the sights and sounds of the Depression.

Songs like "We Shall Overcome" were analogous ro the old Wobbly tune, "Joe Hill." Eisenhower Rediscovered Now, apparently, the mood has shifted again. A couple of years ago, it is interesting to note; faaiionable intellectuals began to rediscover Eisenhower. To people like Garry Wills and Murray Kempton, Dwight Eisenhower was no longer an inarticulate humbler bur, suddenly, wise old Eisenhower who kept us out of foreign entanglements like Vietnam. One well-known intellectual is planning ro write a book in praise of the Coolidge Admin- istrarion which, as a matter of fact, may deserve such praise. On the college campus, the shift mood occurred about two yeats ago.

great children's crusades of the 6os are a remote phenomenon, and cheerfulness has broken in. Pleasure, style, gaiety are once again positive values. Drugs are out, booze is in. At the beginning of this term at Dartmouth I announced a senior seminar in rhe literature of the 19205: Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Pound, Cummings. Millay, Lewis.

Usually a dozen students sign up for a course of this kind, but rhis year 40 tried to get in. Temporarily at least, and through 1976 anyway, this mood certainly have political consequences. (Copyright 1074, King Feature! Decline of tke West? Matter of Fact, by Joseph Alsop ASHINGTON After the world energy conference here in. Washington, it is probably too late to ask whether the decline of the West has begun. Instead, the real questions now appear to be iiow far the West's decline has advanced already, and whether that decline can be halted or reversed.

This way of stating the case may sound extreme and Jeremiah- like. Yet only consider the hard facts of the case. You then conclude that extreme language is amply jusrified, To begin with, the great industrial nations of the non-Communist part of the world have met in conclave. The meeting the leaders of the West have been unable to unite. To go on with, there is the intractable character of the common problem.

The immense growth in productivity of these same industrial nations has required corresponding growth in their energy consumption. In the fact well over a year ago, long before the Yom Kippur vast increase in energy consumption produced a radical change in the supply-demand position. Sellers' Market The oil-producing nations thus found themselves in a strong sellers' market. The result has been what we call the "energy called to consider a common The phrase is misleading, for problem so vast and urgent that it can lead to common ruin. Yet the real essence of the crisis -is not the fuel shortages that every- Pedestrians Are By Art HE ENERGY crisis is not all bad.

One of the organizations that has benefited from it is the American Pedestrian Association which is involved with protecting the rights or pedestrians. Arch Threetoes, me president of APA, said 1974 could be their greatest year. "The Pedestrian is coming back," he said happily. "Our membership is up 30 per cent, and if we have rationing it could triple by summer. Every time someone runs out of gas you've created another Pedestrian." "It must be a great feeling to have made such strides," I said.

Run Over as Lesson "I wouldn't be human if I didn't gloat. For years people thought of a Pedestrian as someone who couldn't afford a car. The entire economy was based on reducing the Pedestrian population of the country. Those who couldn't be shamed into buying an automobile were run over to teach them a lesson. Drivers honked their horns at us in contempt to make us get out of the way.

Anyone who walked to work was considered a nut. We had to breathe the foul air that automobiles produced; and any time we protested that sidewalks were being cut down to make more room for roads, we were told we were destroying America. We suffered for a long rime, but now we'te having our day." "It must do your heart good to see those long lines in front of gas stations," I said. "I feel warm all over," toes admitted "But at rhe same time Pedestrians do not hold grudges. We're going to take back anyone who sincerely says he wants to walk again." "It must be hard to get people to admit that," I said.

Learn to Walk Again "They have to swallow a lot of praie. After' alj, Buchwctld sidered the Pedestrian their No. i enemy. To ease the blow I've given orders to all members of the American Pedestrian Association not to nib it in. When a man's gas tank is empty he is in a very bad psychological state, and if someone taunts him about it he could resort to violence." "Having so many Pedestrians back must cause tremendous problems for you." "Our biggest problem is teaching people how to walk again.

Most adult Americans have forgotten how, and children have never known. We have schools now where poeple can learn the rudiments of walking. It's actually quite si-nple and most of them get the hang of it in a week. We've signed up entire families. Would you like to see one of our classes?" I said I would and Threetoes took me down to the first floor into a gymnasium.

The instructor was standing in front of a class of about 30 people. Some men were carrying briefcases; several women were carrying shopping bags; a few children had schoolbooks. The instructor barked, "All right, now let's try it once again. Put your left foot out Your left foot, dummies Now bring your right foot forward past your left in a straight line Half the class tripped and fell to the floor. Some were giggling and- others were red-faced.

The instructor blew his whistle. "Dammit, didn't I tell you not ro hit your left foot with your right foot when you brought it forward? Everybody on their feet. Let's try it again. I'm going to make Pedestrians out of you if it kills me." Threetoes whispered to me, "He's one of our best instructors. Only 15 per cent of his classes don't make it." (Copyright 1974, Los one talks about.

Instead, the true essence of the crisis is ifee enormous rise in the price of oil, which the oil producers have been able to secure because they are in i sellers' market. however, die immense' economic growth- of the industrial nations has had another feature is now of great significance. The economies of all these nations are intricately dependent not only on freely available oil. but also on oil at relatively reasonable prices. This dependency of the great industrial economies is least halfway to our own dependency on the oxygen in the we breathe.

So much has become more and more clear, as the and economists of the United Western Europe and Japan have begun asking themselves how their respective countries are going to pay for rhe oil they need at the new prices. The answer is that they cannot hope to pay for it, even if oil- prices drift downwa'rd a bit. Thus you have the forecast that no later than the end of the present year higher oil prices will leave every major industrial nation with a huge deficit in its balance of payments. That is just another way of saying that these nations will have been unable to pay for their much more expensive oil imports. In consequence, they will be incurring mountainous debts.

Takng Plunge Together No past experience offers guidance about the consequences of such a situation. The leading industrial nations are also the leading banking nations. In effect, they largely own die world's financial system. There has never been case in the past when every one of these nations was simultaneously going into debt to the tune of billions of dollars per annum. Thus no one can quite predict rhe effect on the world's financial system.

But it must be perfectly clear to any common-sense person that the financial system will be in the gravest danger when all the nations that largely own the system are in deep trouble togerher. That is not the end of the problem, eirher. As anyone can see, the mountainous debts incurred by the leading industrial nations will rake the form of transfers of mountainous capital sums from these nations to the oil-producing nations. But then, will the oil-producing nations do wirh the tens upon tens of billions of capital which they thus acquire? The fashionable answer is that the oil producers will tfien right matters by investing their new wealth 'in rhe industrial nations. But if anyone should be able to judge this kind of problem, that man is the head of the Chase- Manhattan Bank, in fact the leader of rhe U.

S. financial systems' greatest single stronghold, (SeeAlsop, pg. Floating Nuclear. Plants "From the'" off- Acre, nuclear power plant can be considered am'- important breakthrough in power generation. Alexander Zechella, president, Offshore Power Systems.

Floating nuclear reactors could lead to "large ind long-lasting contamination of die world's' a catastrophe of the kind the country never experienced." Henry Kendall and Daniel Ford, Union of Concerned Scientists. NCE AGAIN, THE nuclear power industry is pitted against environmental critics over the safety of nuclear reactors. But. this rime the scene of battle is the oceans. Offshore Power Systems a partnership set up- in -1974 by Wesdnghouse Electric Corp.

and Tenrieco, to build 1 6 floating power plants to a shipyard-like factory in Jacksonville, Fla. OPS will then tow them to ocean sites, where they will be moored just within the limir. The reactors will be protected by a massive breafc- water reef designed to withstand joo-mile-per-hour winds, jo-foot waves, and impacts -from supertankers. So far, OPS has sold four. 1,150 Mw reactors, priced at each, to Public Service Electric Gas Co.

in New Jersey, which will moor the first two near Atlantic City by loSo. The Jacksonville Electric Authority has signed a letter of intent for others, fattening rhe OPS order book to Though another potential order from Middle South Utilities was recently OPS is likely ro win more business soon. "We're talking to utilities from Maine, to Texas." says J. R- Stadelman, an OPS vice-president. "We hope to win as many as 20 of die 50 nuclear plants ordered on the East Coast for operation by '9S7" First Hurdle TADELMAN IS ESPECIALLY optimistic these days because OPS has just cleared its first environmental hurdle.

Last week, a federal court in Jacksonville dismissed a suit by the Audubon Society that sought to bar OPS from building the factory. The society was not challenging the concept of floating nuclear plants. Rather it wanted OPS to abandon the manufacturing site on Blount Island in Jape- son ville's Back River, one of Florida's richest and a spawning ground for the state's fishing industry. -Auaueon will probably appeal the decision, but reversal, seems unlikely: A more powerful challenge may come from eavironmenttlists who have long opposed nuclear power. Many of their arguments against floating reactors are very similar to those aimed at land-based reactors, ranging from concern over radioactive waste disposal to doubts about reactor safety.

Indeed, some crines, say the OPS concept is designed to escape the citizen protest that has delayed so many land-based reactors. "The move offshore is largely public- relations," charges Arthur Tamplin, a nuclear critic with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "They expect less opposition out there." Offshore or on land, rhe most serious question is whether a key safety system known "as the emergency core cooline system is reliable. If the ECCS fails when needed, the. reactor core could melt, releasing dangerous radiation.

"If -there 5 a meltdown accident on land, that's bad. 'But it's much worse if it happens offshore," says Daniel Fora, of the Union of Concerned Scientists Cambridge, Mass. In that event, he explains, radioactive particles could be carried by currents anl consumed by fish, thereby entering man's food chain. Adds Laurence I. Moss, president of the Sierra Club: In an accident, offshore, radiation could easily enter the biosphere on 'a- large scale." Ford and Henry Kendall, a physicist at MIT, also fear that radioactive material shipped to and from the plant could spill into the And they worry that rhe plane might not be able ro withstand severe storms- or a collision a tanker carrying explosive material, as liquefied The Atomic Energy Commission is now studying these issues and will hold public hearings before issuing a construction license.

The AEC has long insisted that the ECCS is reliable and that the possibility of an accident is extremely remote. Thus few observers expect the AEC to deny the OPS license. As for the problem of possible collision, has been designing a D-shaped breakwater to protect rhe reactors. The University of Florida is testing a scale model breakwater," and early results are good. The structural safety of both the breakwater and the plants will be reviewed by rhe AEC and the Coast Guard.

The Advantages OTH OPS AND claim eat offshore plants offer many environmental advantages and some environmentalists agree. For one thing, the thermal pollution that has killed so many fish on inland rivers is a minor problem at sea, where the vast quantities of ocean water will quickly quench hot water discharged: from the reactor. For anorfier, ocean siting eliminates the need to put nuclear plants', on scenic land along rivers and lakes. The complex, for example, will need only 100 acres of ocean. On land, it would take 500 acres, if the utility could find a site.

Finally, ocean siting provides a three-mile buffer between the plant and the nearest community more than at some existing plants. In short, those critics who oppose nuclear power will oppose rhe floating reactors, and might sue to stop them. But other environmentalists those concerned primarily about land use and thermal pollution may welcome the move offshore. "If we have to have more nukes," concedes one conservationist, "maybe they should go in the ocean." Beyond siting advantages, utilities that have ordered rhe offshore plants expect manv other benefits. When Westinghouse and Tenneco formed OPS.

their goal was to cut production costs and license delays by building standardized units in a factory. Complete standardization, which would speed licensing because each plant is identical, is an AEC goal. But it has never been possible for land-based reactors because ground conditions vary from site to site. Moreover, a completely assembled nuclear facility is too large to be shipped over land. Thus, all land-based plants are assembled at the site, not in a factory.

By going offshore, OPS barge the complete plant from factory to site. And a platform can be standardized for any ocean site, much like a ship is designed for ocean travel anywhere. "When something is floating, it doesn't know if it's floating off 'New Jersey or Georgia," says OPS's Stadelman. The link between Westinghouse and Tenneco makes sense. Westinghouse provide its conventional reactors, while a Tenneco subsidiary, Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock will furnish the know-how to build the floating platforms.

Wirh a 1974 budget of OPS now has 380 employes, drawn mainly frcvn the rwo companies, and by year-end the work force will grow to 800. BUSINESS WEEK.