The Evening Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 16

PAGE 16 THE EVENING SUN, BALTIMORE, MONDAY, JANUARY 20, 1958 American Gothic THE EVENING SUN Publlahed Every Week Dy THE A. S. ABELL COMPANY, Wojjam P. Schmick, President Editorial Often Baltimore 3 Calvert Street WaahlmtAn 4 National PrM Blrtf. Bonn 379 KofctMiMMlritue London I IS tint Sirwt Rome Vl nl PleblKlto 113 Motcow Badoveya fctmotechnara 1334 Selected New Books In Review Authors Notebook Hall ttattt Outtitt Of Baltimore Morn.

Ee. Sunday 1 It .30 11.30 85e Tite.rmbtT Circulation (aily to Friday) Mornln lfll.800 190.008 4 1.194 Evening jlSOl'fl SlS.MR Sunday 317.838 334.300 4.461 6 monthi Iff 50 tfl.SO 14.70 18. SO 1 $11.75 IU.7S Mtmbtr et th Attnrlatei Prtti The Aaenclated Prua la entliled erlu1vel to the remibllretlon of ell the local niv printed In thin-newnpapfr ai well an all AP dlnpatrhea. way up. And no telling what other Interests could come along to deflect the amazing Fischer.

There are those among his countrymen who will be content If he merely goes on to college and turns into brilliant mathematics major. 90 flWCE Cl IfYini. a "I II vl mm I I I IK FaoM a Writer's Notebook. Bv Van Wyck Brooks. Dutton, $3.

R. VAN WYCK BROOKS, the eminent historian of American literature, here sets down in a leisurely fashion some brief notes and comments on readers and writers, on "our time," on "words," on "the avant-garde," etc. The groupings are more or less arbitrary, as all the remarks touch upon the literary life. Many are reactions to what other people have said; what Edith Sitwell said about Pope, what Theodore Dreiser said about mariners, wht Kafka said about hotels. I Imagine that most men of letters keep notebooks, and that often the entries take the form of quotations from other authors, and of small observations about people and places personal to the compiler.

These jottings are not valuable in themselves, because the work of making something out of them, the work of exploration and synthesis is subsequent, and appears only in more serious worl often in quite unrecognizable contexts. These are the pinpricks, the suggestions, the asides of the thinking process, and in setting them down the writer is merely reminding himself of what will bear further consideration and extension. Tit- The Forum Letters of not wore than 300 wordt preferred. No letter can be used unless th writer gives his name. Addresses will not be published, but must accompany all letter.

Comparative Gas Rates To the Editor or The Evening Sun Sir: With reference to the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company's petition to the Public Service Commission for an increase in gas, electric and steam rates, I offer the following. The Inclosed sheet is a. copy of the rates for natural gas supplied by the East Ohio Gas Company, serving customers in Cuyahoga county in Ohio and particularly Cleveland, "the best location in the nation." Cleveland and Cuyahoga county have approximately the same population as Baltimore city and county, respectively. A typical summer gas bill for 50 units costs $7.33 in Baltimore and $3.62 in Cleveland. A winter gas bill for 200 units costs $25.33 in Baltimore and $13.45 in Cleveland.

All figures are net and Baltimore costs are less State tax. Even a hurried inspection of the above figures will reveal the startling fact that the Baltimore rates are almost double the Cleveland rates for the same product. I can hardly believe the additional 300 to 400 miles of pipeline can double the cost of the gas East Ohio Gas Co. pipes its gas from Texas.) Has the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company done all it can to Increase its efficiency? Is there any waste that can be reduced? Should not many of the free services, such as repairing of furnaces, be eliminated and be paid for; separately to heating contractors? These and many other questions must be answered satisfactorily before the public can be sold on the need for this proposed increase in gas rates. Any further increases will surely drive more people to the use of fuel oil or, perhaps, even coal (perish the thought)! Ernest C.

Farkas. Baltimore, 'Jan. 15. Index Of The New Mood A year ago the catchword in Washington was economy. The President had submitted a budget calling for an expansion of spending for defense and for numerous domestic programs.

In violent reaction, Congress effected reductions all along the line. The congressional mood of 1957 was exemplified not only In the cuts in appropriations but also in the fact that, for the first time in three years, the session ended without the passage of a bill temporarily raising the ceiling on the national debt. Congress, which tends to be too liberal on appropriations, has been rather jealous of late about authorizing increases in the public debt. Temporary increases were voted in 1954, 1955 and 1956 but in 1957 the usual bill giving the Treasury power to borrow enough to get through the lean months during which income tax collections lag behind the pace of spending was omitted. But for the sputniks, there would have been no great chance for repairing the omission.

However, the demand for action to speed the missile program and to hasten other defense undertakings has changed all that. The first really important move in the new session was the enactment last week of a supplementary military construction bill giving the Air Force immediate authority to spend some $550,000,000 for an additional missile-launching base and for a system to give warning of the approach of hostile missiles. Two days after that measure cleared the House the Ways and Means Committee reported favorably on a bill authorizing an increase in the debt effective until June 30, 1959. Passage of this bill through the House later this week is predicted. the fair expectations of early 1957 evaporate in the controversial excitement engendered by Russian triumphs in outer space.

It is not a welcome change in so far as the national finances are concerned, but it seems to be inevitable. Men who are not at all disposed to relax the pressure which a debt ceiling exerts on public spending concede that the Treasury is in such a tight place as to make an increase in the ceiling I 111! Executive Clemency When Governor McKeldin commuted Al-vin Braxton's death sentence to life imprisonment, he surely knew what a vigorous condemnation of his action would develop and that a debate would follow. He also knew, perhaps better than any of his critics, what a terrible responsibility rests upon a governor who must decide whether to give life to a man who would otherwise die, who must decide which course will serve society's best ends. Perhaps for both of these reasons, he has proposed that this responsibility be shared by a board composed of "outstanding citizens having particular qualifications in such fields as sociology, psychiatry, law and related fields." Since the Governor's proposal is not yet spelled out, it is hard as yet for anyone to agree or disagree. But it is worth while pointing out that ground has already been broken for such a procedure in other states.

According to the latest information on file with the Council of State Governments in Chicago, the power to commute sentences is shared by the governor with a board of some kind in at least thirteen of the 48 states. In all but one case, according to the tabulation, the board has some kind of definite power. That is it is more than Just an advisory body. And in most cases where there is such a board, it is a wholly separate body; the governor is not a member. Whether such a system would be desirable or acceptable in Maryland, we do not undertake at this time to say.

But the suggestion is one which deserves exploration. For as letters to the Forum in recent days have indicated, this is a subject on which Marylanders feel deeply. with APOLOGei TO GRANT HVO0 But by the same token the notes can be interesting to the A Letter From Colorado Some 200,000 shecpgrowcrs wait to see whether the "Brannan Act for wool" will be renewed; Denver defeats an effort to impose a city-earned income tax, and conservation farming finds favor in the Great Plains. outside reader for two reasons-If he be himself a writer oi a thinker, he discovers that another's notebook often serves the same purpose as his own: it discovers to him germs of ideas that he can capitalize in his own way. And if he be only a general reader, and especially a By ROSCOE FLEMING day and cutting off all contri butions to such things as the symphony, summer band concerts in the parks, etc.

Some servation farming, practiced over years, actually increases net farm income. This is the most encouraging omen for growth of the type ot farming which hands the soil on to the next generation unimpaired and even enriched. Everyone liker to make money, even farmers. critics say it is more concerned Denver. nation's 260,000 sheep-A growers, the vast majority of them in the West, are anxiously watching Congress for a clue to the fate of the 1954 "Brannan Act for wool," a unique law which will end in 1959 unless renewed.

Under this act, woolgrdwers have sold their product for what about punishing the people than in saving money, since these had cost relatively little. reader of the finished works of author of the notebdoks, he is let in on the processes of a mind, and can observe some at least of the sources of that thought or art which he has appreciated in its finished form. To read a notebook is to overhear a man However that may be, there is talking to himself, and such is already talk of resubmitting the issue next year Under our city charter, the Council can never re-enact a proposal turned down by the people, but could re it would bring at the ranch, human curiosity, or human sympathy, that we invariably find ourselves eager to lend an ear. then have been later compensated "by direct Government payment up to an agreed- submit the same proposal, or We find Mr. Brooks, then, often upon price.

This is the opposite one differing only in detail, to popular vote. Commutation-Con To the Editor or The Evening Sun Sir; On January 14, 1958, In The Evening Sun read with dismay where Governor McKeldin had commuted a "cop killer's" sentence to life imprisonment. My business is located near a police precinct and I come in daily contact with many patrolmen, especially young probation police. I shudder when I realize that in fifteen years this "cop killer" will be eligible for parole and these fine young men who make a career of protecting citizens will again be exposed to such a menace. Vincent L.

Schwing, setting down platitudes: "One has to be partly at odds with the Zeitgeist of one's age if one wishes to contribute to the building of another." But sometimes The Soil Conservation Service imperative. The increase will ne temporary, thus forcing a review of the borrowing policy a year hence. The temporariness of the increase may be illusory. Few informed persons think, the budget forecast of a small surplus at the end of the fiscal yeajr 1959 is likely to materialize. If it doesn't and if there is no tax increase, the debt may not get back under the present ceiling of $275,000,000,000 for several years.

And, few expect a tax increase for some time. Even President Eisenhower has said that he prefers a deficit to a tax raise for the present. Does this mean that deficits are going to be a permanent part of our system and that the creeping inflation was a product of the New Deal and not much has been heard it is not bad to have the obvious of other farm price-support programs, which raise the original price to the grower. It was originally proposed by Charles F. Brannan when Secretary of Agriculture to apply to general farm crops, but Congress then would have none of it.

The excuse for its passage by the Republican Eighty-fourth Congress was that the production of wool, held to be an in phrased for us. We find him wondering whether sharks have of it in Republican years. But it has been vigorous, and recently was, placed in charge of a special Great Plains program to help the farmers of that nightmares, and why Europeans find America "ghostless." After all, he says, there is Charles Addams, not to mention Hawthorne and Henry James; but our ghosts are literary, not "real" in the way that, for instance, English ghosts are. wind-tortured and drought-vulnerable area to change over to types of farming suited to the region. This act au The United States plant for the production of helium, a Government monopoly, is falling behind the demand this unique and uniquely useful gas, employed in therapy, in industry and now in the atomics program.

It is unique also in production. Some natural gases of the United States are rich in it. It is an unburnable component from the standpoint of the gas producer, a drawback. So natural gas on its way to the kitchens and furnaces of America is piped into the Government plants, cooled down to 300 degrees below zero which liquefies everything but the contained helium and nitrogen-then warmed up again and sent on its way minus those two unburnable gases, and all within a minute. Then the nitrogen and helium are further separated, and the latter is shipped all over the country, and to some extent the world.

The program earns its own keep, and all attempts to turn it over to privte industry have so far died a-born-ing. But whether Congress will lay out $15,000,000 or more for additions is another question. Baltimore, Jan. 14. dispensable raw material, was dropping rapidly so that desperate measures were needed.

thorizes $150,000,000 to be spent Since then production has remained steady at about over a ten-year period. Farmers who work out acceptable plans for "conservation farm Mr. Billopp Why does American literature 000,000 pounds yearly. Friends of the act say that this stability Machine Citizens To the case-hardened machine politician the sweetest words that ever fell from a citizen's lips are these: "Oh, bother the primary election! I haven't time to vote, much less to register. I'll just do my voting at the general election in November." And the old pro smiles and smiles, happy in his tried and true knowledge that where the citizen moves out the politician moves in.

Oil up the machine, squeeze out the independent candidates, shake down the jobholders and the word spreads through the ward clubs: on with the political deal! Thus the primary election is handed over to the professionals by the very citizens whose protests often ring out loudest against machine politics but whose time, they solemnly maintain, is too valuable to waste a few minutes on registering and then voting. What can be done? Not much, but what little "there is the Board of Supervisors of Elections is setting out to do. Teams of registrars are soon to set up shop in a number of public buildings throughout the city. The voter whose name is not on the list can step up on his way to work, scribble a few lines and be on his way. in a matter of minutes.

Registrars are to stay a few days at each location and then move on to another spot, thus deliberately seeking out voters for the May 20 primary. Also the regular registration office remains open from 9 A.M. to 4 P.M. in the basement of the People's Court Building, Fallsway and Gay street. Only those need register who failed either to register or to vote at least once in the past five years.

All others are presumably on the election rolls and may exercise their rights on election day. Here, then, is the chance awaited by those displeased with the sort of politics they have been getting. Let them see to their own registration, press their friends to do likewise and then organize the most effective form of election day phenomenon a big independent turnout. concern itself so little with Mr. Brooks makes a ing," which means in effect going to a grass-livestock economy, will be aided by SCS which deficits entail is going to continue lo lap the' value of our savings? The answer is not too encouraging, but one circumstance holds out promise of improvement.

It is the prospect that with a business recovery in the not too distant futuresay in the latter part of the year tax yields will again climb and, if the economic growth of the country is then resumed, we may soon have yields that, if all discretion is not thrown to the winds on spending, will bring tax revenue up to the level of spending and perhaps leave something for debt retirement. This isn't a happy outlook, but it is probably the best that can be expected. has justified it. Forty-four senators, most of them from the "Not Interested" The words "Not Interested" good case against "good society" as the sphere of personal opera may be used orally or written. West, have signed a bill to continue It for four more years.

In preparation for the na tion for the artist, but the prior question of subject matter re In either case the operation is tional meeting of the Associa The money to pay producers the matter of a moment. The words are short, simple and is limited to 70 per cent of the mains unanswered. One can reply as one will. I must say I specifiq receipts from the tariff easy to pronounce. They serve have been struck myself, in looking over current books and on wool, beginning January 1, tion of Soil Conservation districts in Minneapolis in February, their president sent out a questionnaire, the principal answer to which finds 90 per cent of members saying that con as an answer to persons who want to sell something, get a contribution or recruit a periodicals, with the unbelievable number of serious poets who have spent their boyhoods The words can stop a tele phone conversation before it gets started.

They can ward off a personal visit. They can ex Our Yesterdays News Of 1933 FrQm The Evening Sun And How It Looks Now cuse attendance at a meeting. They do not require further explanation. There is a quality of finality about them. They permit no entering adays, a Baltimorean has to smile.

In 1958, the city senatorial districts still total six, out of a total of 29. Demand for change, in fact, has pretty much shifted to the lower house. Even in 1933, part of the idea of a seventh district was to add another six delegates to the city's 36 out of the total of 118. The latest proposal introduced last year, and likely to be revived or superseded in next wedge such as the possibility that thouph nothing can be done at the moment something might be done at a future time. People who are not interested do not have to plead physical infirmities.

So they can lead strenuous lives, sitting up until all hours and taxing their minds and bodies to the limit without running the risk of being caught In a contradiction or falsehood. 1953. Thus the woolgrowers claim, whether validly or not, that they don't "burden the Treasury." But wool prices have remained so low as to cause huge drafts on this source of revenue, which was expected to bring in about $190,000,000 during the four-year original life of the act. The measure is more expensive than was expected, so that the first two years cost $111,000,000 leaving only to finance its last two years. For this reason Secretary of Agriculture Benson has held payments to a national total average of 62 cents a pound "in the grease," which wool-growers say isn't enough in view of the steadily rising costs.

But they have at least stayed in business. Meanwhile, the department has worked off the last of 150,000,000 pounds originally held In storage, and thinks prices at the ranch will be higher this year and next. If they aren't, the act will be still c6stlicr than its friends maintained. The Denver cjty administration lost by 55,000 votes to. 44,000 its special election try month's session would have They do not have to excuse Champion At 14 An even 100 years have gone by since Paul Morphy of New Orleans, at the age of 20, became chess champion of the world.

He resigned four years later when there were no' more unbeaten masters left to challenge him which makes it 96 years' since an American has attained that symbolic mountain peak of the intellect. Germany, Austria, Russia (as at present), the Netherlands, even Cuba have produced one or more world's champions, meantime; they were older men, too, for the legend of the youthful chess prodigy dissipates against the factual background of vast tactical knowledge and the stiff tournament-entry qualifications that a newcomer must acquire on his way up. Visions of a new champion, or afc least contender, now at last float before the eyes cf American chess fans. He is Bobby Fischer of Brooklyn, who at 14 is still only a high school sophomore, yet who has just won the Marshall Cup, which is considered emblematic of the national championship. In so doing he displaced Samuel Reshevsky himself, the one postwar American who has proved himself able to take on the top-level Russians on more or less even terms.

Young Fischer hasn't even played any Russians yet, let alone sat down to a board across from Vasily Smyslov, the 36-year-old world title-holder. But the day, or month, may not be far off. This startling appearance in our midst of a new potential world grand master could argue well for American chess various recent signs of growth and youth have been observed but mostly it is a fortuitous event, just as it was when the amazing Morphy -dazzled the spectators of his era. Russia, too, so doubt has some teen-age whizzes on the raised the city delegation from themselves for indulging in all (so says the verse) slopping the pigs in Kentucky, or thereabouts. Are we succumbing to our own propaganda (the pioneer, the poor, the old corn-patch), or what? Mr.

Brooks's main concern is with America and Americans, and he is at his best when considering our love of power rather than "living," our ineradicable belief in the free will, effective or riot, our mistaken notion that cultivating individuality will produce it. The cult of anything at all, as he points out, can only breed uniformity. On these lines, he finds the failure of "character" a flaw in our contemporary literature and in our culture. "Character exists when people are interested in it and tolerate it, and variety of character is the life of civilization." To which one can only add: Amen. Julia Randall.

The Old, Old West From the Chicago Dally Tribune That brings us to the reader who wants to know what is an adult Western. The plot must be of voting age 21 years and the actors are all old enough to know better. Gob Humor From the About Face. Norfolk. Va.l Judge What possible excuse can you give for acquitting the murderer? Jury Foreman Insanity, your honor.

Judge What, all twelve of you? 36 to 48. But the very center of emphasis has also, meanwhile, sorts of extravagancies after Seventh District," the i fiat, mathematical headline over an Evening Sun editorial at this point in 1933, would not of itself convey much meaning today. What about the Seventh district its odd shape, its rising population, its incumbent congressman? But a quarter century ago, readers were probably less puzzled by the term, and more emotional about it. In 1933, Maryland had only six seats in the House of Representatives and no immediate hope of increase. The Seventh district, rather, was a General Assembly thing a matter of State representation.

Baltimore had six senators and the 23 counties one each. But Baltimore, as The Evening Sun pointed out, then contained 49.3 per cent of Maryland's population. In a rural, low-population county such as Caroline, The Evening Sun noted, a voter stood to have twelve times as much influence through his State senator as a Baltimorean did. By rights, the city should have not six senators but fourteen. So it would be no more having declared that they are changed.

It used to be the coun ties as a whole that blocked one too poor to make even a token contribution to a worthy cause. apportionment plan alter an other; in 1958, three counties, Baltimore Prince Georges and Montgomery, stand to gain more Changeable Verity? Fingerprints, as every loyal reader of the crime comics will testify, are among the immutables. Everybody's prints are relentlessly different from everybody else's, unless the fellow who printed you was too liberal with the gunk and the result was just an ink blot. And, everybody's fingerprints are fixed for life, fixed and unchangeable as the alphabet and the temperature of freezing. A New Orleans doctor now declares that one of these basic verities isn't so veracious after all.

Fingerprints can, too, be altered. He says that they can be sanded off by a form of revolving wire brush, and that they won't just grow back in either. This isn't going to sit well with the various fingerprint-file custodians, the people with millions and millions of cards which have been of much occasional help in identifying bodies, whether or not they have ever helped much in jailing live and identified criminals. It would be a nuisance if Loose-Tooth Louis and Nate the Kneecap should be able to go in for style changes in fingerprints the way they do in automobiles and aliases. than the city.

People who are not interested do not have to evolve long, tedious logical arguments to justify their inactivity. A husband does not have to blame it on his wife, or a wife on her husband. "People who state that they are not interested get a reputation for It. So they are let alone. But people who are not in The present combined popu: lation of the three counties just about equals that of Baltimore.

to impose an earnings tax of one half to one per cent on in Yet the three county delegations total only eighteen seats. come earned in the city; in The unwillingness of the re part to raise some $7,000,000 maining counties to give up their yearly to match the expenses of undue strength in the Legisla growth, in part to compel sub ture, as would nappen in a modernization of the creaking urban dwellers who work in the city to pay part of the ex terested must make their lack of interest unanimous. For if they have a pet Interest and try to interest others, what an opportunity for the others to get even by announcing emphatically that they are not CHRISTOPHER BILLOPP Constitution of 1867, Is often penses of running it. Promptly cited as the largest reason why the counties also stall off efforts than fair, in fact far short of fair, for the city to get a seventh senatorial district. Seeing the words again now the city has gone on an "austerity basis" which means closing its fine new library on Sun- to rewrite Maryland's basic law,.