The Raleigh Register from Beckley, West Virginia • Page 4

4--Raleigh Register, Beckley, W. Monday Afternoon, May 5,1909 Thought For Today To add a library? to home is to give that house a Roman statesman. Legal Liabilities In Campus Riots 'How Could You Do This To Us! 1 College administrations not only need to display more backbone in the face or student violence, as President Nixon has suggested. They may also need strong bankbooks to pay for defense attorneys. "Coming months may see a wave of lawsuits brought by nondlssenting parents, taxpayers, contributors, alumni and others whose rights are abridged when dissenters i criminal acts," says Fred E.

Inbau, president of Americans for Effective Law Enforcement, a national, nonprofit organization whose directors include prominent lawyers and civic leaders. Persons whose positions of authority require them to maintain order, but who do not through malfeasance, misfeasance or nonfeasance of duly, are leaving themselves open to legal action, says Inbau, professor of criminal law at Northwestern University. Among potential defendants are individual college administrators, boards of trustees, faculty members who permit violence or participate in it and law enforcement offi- cials who fail to act when criminal acts are committed in plain view, even though college officials will not press charges. A governmental body, such as the city or county, may be liable for injuries resulting from failure to enforce the law. Dissenting students faculty members who clamor for their brand of "freedom" may ironically find themselves charged with violations of the Federal Civil Rights Act if they abridge the rights of others through unlawful detention or other criminal acts.

Among potential plaintiffs are taxpayers who might bring suits against public institulions on the grounds of misuse or waste of public money, and donors of funds or their heirs who might sue because of the failure of administrators to manage the funds properly. At least one university, Columbia, already is being sued by a group of students, who charge that their studies were interrupted by last year's riots. It could be an isolated case or, as Inbau warns, only the beginning. Don Oakley No End To Prying rivacy, it seems, is a vanishing i i i in America. A person can land in jail if he refuses to answer a long list of questions, many of them highly personal, in the 1970 Census.

Now somebody somewhere in the great labyrinth of bureaucracy in Washington has come up with a list of 72 questions for new recipients of Social Security or Medicare benefits. These deal with all sorts of personal matters, including past and expected financial affairs of the individual. If the Social Security recipient, who has retired on his earned benefits, doesn't answer, he gets follow-up letters from Uncle Sam. Senator Sam Ervin is trying to find out if the bureaucrats are making this inquisition of the retired elderly a mandatory affair. At this writing he has no luck getting even that information out of HEW or Census or whoever dreamed up the questionnaire.

Congress ought to bring this thing to a screeching halt by outlawing penalties on the Census questionnaire and prohibiting quizzing of retired people who ought to have the right to a little peace in their remaining years. If this keeps on, Washington will be figuring out ways to "wire" prospective mothers in order to get personal data on unborn babies, and to ask the dying about their plans beyond the grave. Greenville (S. News. Richard Spong Most Deserving Often Don't Win Pulitzers The Pulitzer Prizes In journalism and the arts arc to be announced it Columbia University on May S.

"All prizes, like all titles, are dangerous." The remark was made by Sinclair Lewis in 1926 when he refused the Pulitzer Prize for Arrowsmith, still smarting at having been passed over for Main Street and Babbitt. The Pulitzer Prizes have witnessed more than their share of ironies in more than half century today's awards will be the 53rd since 1917. Two of tho sharpest ironies in Pulitzer history marked the 19C8 awards. The prizes were announced by President Grayson Kirk of Columbia University, but the institution itself was shut down by a student strike. The prize for general local reporting went to the Detroit Free Press, which had been silenced by a labor strike for more than five months.

It is hardly conceivable that the exercise of awarding eight prizes In journalism and seven in the arts could be accomplished without wounded outcries, but the yelps on Pulitzer Day have been piercing. For a time it was agreed that Ihe Pulitzer advisory board of 12 news executives, tliu President of Columbia, and a nonvoting secretary at least knew a good newspaper story when they one, and the complaints had been largely aimed Democratic Published by HKCKLKY NEWSPAPERS COHPOHATION, 341 Prince (25301) Second Class innil privileges authorized it Beckley, W. and Hinton, Va. Telephone All Departments -Beckley 25.1-3321 iro'deY Editor MEMBER National AdvortislnR Representative WARD-GRIFFITH COMPANY, INC. Now York, Chicago, Detroit, Atlan'a.

Boston, Charlotte. Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh SUBSCRIPTION ItATES BY MAIL. (Only where we do not have established delivery services) Daily and Sunday, one year and Sunday, six months $13.50 Daily only, one year $20.00 Daily only, six months S10.00 HOME DELIVERED By Carrier or Distributor Daily find Sunday, per work Daily and Sunday, per half-month Daily and Sunday. jxr rr.cmth When reqrrsting a eh.inRc of address Eivf old address as new. Throi; per cent state sales a must lie added lo above mail rate? fnr nil subscriptions Wrst All CArrifrs.

distributors arr inrfrpendrnt iubscripfion payments marie to them their against the awards for Ihe arts. But then in 1967 the board overrode professional jurors' recommendations and denied Pulitzers to Harrison Salisbury of the N. Y. Times for his reporting from Norlh Viclnam and to Columnists Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson for their disclosures of the financial affairs of Sen. Thomas Dodd, D-Conn.

Joseph Pulitzer a member of the advisory board and the 56-year- old grandson of the prize donor, the original Joseph, run an editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch calling Salisbury's reporting "the finest bit of work in his field in 1966." The awards went to R. John Hughes of the Christian Science Monitor for dispatches from Indonesia and to Stanley W. Penn and Monroe W. Karmin of the Wall Street Journal for exposing links between organized crime in the United Stales and gambling in Ihe Bahamas.

The jurors for national reporting reportedly had never seen Ihe Penn-Karmin slorics. News awards in 1968 stirred up little controversy. "It was a very peaceful year," said Nowbold Noycs editor of the Washington Star and an advisory board member. In the arts, the novel award to William Styron for The Confessions of Nat Turner was criticized by some. Of the music award to George Crumb for Echoes of Time and the River Irving Kalodin wrote: "Even the musically literate reader may wonder: Wiio is George Crumb? Lest the reader assume he is, really, a musical illiterate, I re-assure him that this was also my reaction." Last year, for tho fourth time in six years, no award was made for drama.

This was generally taken as not an injustice but a sad commentary on the Hroadway season. Clive Barnes of the N. Y. Times observed: "The track record for the last six years is not precisely encouraging the A i a theater." You can make long lists of illustrious names who probably should hnvc had Pulitzers but didn't Scott Fitzgerald, Theodore Dreiser, Clifford Odds, Lillian a Charles Beard, Arthur Schlcsinger, for example. Hut howovor uneven Ihe selections, the board occasionally has shown real intellectual courage and the prizrs unrloiibtcdly outweigh prestige their modest financial plums, $1.000 each for journalism, $500 for the arts.

GOP Takes Dead Aim On Dixie In 70 Senate Elections By RAYMOND LAIIR WASHINGTON (UPI) --The more optimistic Republican dreams for 1970 now include a vision of three Dixie states, each with both of its senators elected to sit on the GOP side of the center aisle. Many politicians still remember when all of the 11 states of the old confederacy sent only two members to Congress from House districts in eastern Tennessee. More have been elected to both the House and Senate since the South began moving toward a two-party system when the late Dwight D. Eisenhower was president. Needs Seven Seats Now one Republican sits In the Senate from each of four Southern stales--South Carolina, Tennessee, Florida and Texas.

Senate scats now held by Democrats in Tennessee, Florida and Texas may be major targets in the 1970 GOP campaign to gain the seven seats it needs to win control of the Senate. In Tennessee, Rep. William E. Brock or Rep. Dan H.

Kuykendall may try to unseat Sen. Albert Gore. Rep. William C. Cramer, R- is regarded as a likely candidate for the seat now occupied by Sen.

Spessard L. Holland. In Texas, Republican Rep. George Bush is taking a hard look at his chances to win the scat of Sen. Ralph W.

Yarborough, chairman of the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee. Before his election to the House, Bush tried and failed to bump out Yarborough six years ago. Of the 34 of 100 Senate seats to be filled next year, the Democrats now hold 25 and the Republicans nine. Although past elections indicate losses for the party of the national administration when the presidency is not at stake, the territory involved in Senate elections is fertile for Republican gains. But unless the political climate is extraordinarily favorable for the GOP, a gain of seven Senate seats would be a great triumph.

Has 'Fighting' Chance At the Republican governors meeting'at Lcxineton, last week, the usually optimistic House Republican leader Gerald R. Ford foresaw "a fighting chance" for his party to gain the 28 seats it needs in 1970 to control the House. But Ford felt that even that hope could be kept alive only 'under some conditions. Those included a Vietnam peace settlement acceptable to most of the American people, maintenance of economic growth without inflation and a successful campaign against crime. The goals mentioned by Ford depend more on the success of the Nixon administration than on the record written by Republicans in Congress.

Crazy World Of Washington City Optimism Likened To Cigar-Smoking Wife By LEON BURNF.TT WASHINGTON (UPI) --Odds and ends from the nation's capital--mostly odd: Anthony Downs, an urban affairs expert from Chicago, was discussing the problems in that field. In response to one question, he replied: "Anyone who is optimistic about the cities today is like the man who came to the conclusion that his wife had given up cigarettes because he kept finding cigar butts around the house." Wayward words: --House Republican Leader Gerald Ford, discussing one of President Nixon's latest legislative proposals: "The obscene and pornographic message that will be coming up. (laughter) I'd better start again." --Rep. James II. Schcucr, D- N.Y., complaining bitterly about being barred from a While Inside The Storehouse House meeting: "I consider it a gross slight." Anyone inleresled in human behavior under certain conditions might want to attend an affair coming up in Washington May 12.

This is from the announcement: "Cognac booths representing the greatest houses of France will be everywhere! At each table Cognac specialties will be offered followed by more Cognac, more Comae and more Cognac. after an intermission to serve crone suzetlc, more Cognac will be served." At a budget hearing, Sen. Ralph Yarborough, demanded of Postmaster General Winton M. Blount why regional post offices had been forbidden to answer questions from members of Congress. Blount: "In order lo improve our service we have centralized our congressional liaison here in Washington." "In that case," said Yarborough, "I will take up a postal problem with you right that citizens of Pecan Gap, Tex.

were furious because their post office closed during the noon hour. Blount said he'd look into it. An hour later, an aide whispered something to Blount, and he announced: "To demonstrate our new efficiency, I have an answer for you about Pecan Gap. A decision has been made to keep the post office open during the lunch hour." On April the nuclear- powered submarine Whale surfaced at the North Pole. Happened to be CO years to the day and hour after the Adm.

Robert E. Perry expedition arrived there. Tile Navy announced this April 25--embargoed, for reasons known only to that Great Bureaucrat in the sky, for 2 p.m. Ohio River Oil-Gas Lease Plan Causing Concern By FANNY SEII.ER CHARLESTON (UPI) -The increased aclivily in oil and gas drilling in West Virginia was evidenced last week by the announcement that the state will lake bids lo lease gas and oil under Ihe Ohio River bed. Along with this increased ac- livily has been a growing concern about protection i leases should be required to afford surface owners.

Some of this concern was showed by both men and women whose voices broke when they testified this year to lawmakers about property damage and loss of domestic water supplies without legal recourse. Under the typical lease there is very litlle proleclion for surface owner, and the lerms of Ihe lease normally lie up Ihe mineral rights perpetually. The legal term is "pcrpcluily." There is a belief among a few slale officials Ihal cerlaiti damages which surface mine operators must pay under the 1967 strip mining act should be extended to drilling operations. Under a lease described by different attorneys at the stale- house as "typical," a landowner who also owned the mineral rights under a prime 200-acrc tract in lioonc County was offered this year the assurance thai a well would not be drilled within 200 feet of the house or barn. No other building was mentioned.

If the landowner had signed 25 Years Ago From The 1W4 Files Of The Raleigh Register Jack Turner, Donald Dix and Raymond Payne left this week for Wilmington, Delaware, where they will report to the Philadelphia Phillies for spring baseball practice. The three Beckley youths signed contracts with the National league club during the past wir.t«* the lease he would have received a $1 "down payment." But if oil or gas were found, he would not have received the normal one-eighth royalty because a paragraph permitted Uie one-eighth royalty lo be, in ef- fecl, put into a fund and distributed among other landowners in the development "field." i yield could have, his attorney advised him, been as litlle as one-lwenlielh. The lease provided for no payment of timber, cither. The slate Supreme Court recently established that leases are effective until an unsuccessful search for oil and gas is abandoned. It does not mailer if rcnlal payments are stopped for years.

The lease in question in the case before Ihe Supreme Court dated back to 1903 and was still valid today, including a "royalty" payment of $75 per well every three months. On the olhcr hand, the owners of mineral rights whose properly is circled by acres of mineral rights already leased can be put in a situalion of accepting I lerms of a lease or hiring an independent driller to offset a well that is near enough to siphon off gas or oil--if there is any--under the unleased acreage. Tliis was part of the problem facing the slale in leasing under the Ohio River, according to a member of the Public Land Cor- poralion which conlrols all slate owned land and minerals. Part of the reason a "holdout" may have litlle choice in prolccling mineral is because of a so-called code of ethics among big producers. An individual, affiliated with a producer in West Virginia who cannot be idcnlificd, said recently that reputable firms will move into an area being leased by a competitor.

If what he said is right, and he is in a position to know, the effect of (he code would apparently limit competition. A hangup over casing oil and gas wells and which state department--Natural Resources or Mines would be responsible for enforcement--helped delay one year any legislative action to alleviate water pollution alone. A state employe who follows closely legislative activities remarked last week that as long as the makeup of Ihe Senate remained unchanged, Ihcre would be lille chance of change. He spoke of both. Democrats and Republicans.

During the 1969 session Senate President Lloyd Jackson and Sen. Carl Gainer, chairman of the Senate Committee on Nalur- al Rseources, both emphatically denied that their joint venture to develop oil and gas fields in Upshur County would affect Iheir voles on Ihe bill lo require casing Ihrough water. One of Ihe Senate's bachelors, Sen. Mario Palumbo and Louise Corey, fashion coordinator for a Charleston department will exchange wedding May 10. 50 Years Ago From The 101!) Files Of The Raleigh Register Fred Blake of Glen White left this week for Buckhanuon where he has enrolled for special courses in West Virginia Wcslcyan.

Incidentally Fred will be numbered among the members of the pitching staff which expects to lower the bat- tine; averages of the crack college teams of Pennsylvania and Maryland during tho coming season, when the Wesleyan beys propose to tour these states. .1. A. Sharp, Raleigh, is taking advantage of the daylight saving law by moving lo the Prince E. Lilly homestead, where he intends to cultivate large track patch.

Bug Oust S. Ferguson's Fur Marker By BOB WILLS Rocky Mount, Va. April 30, 1969 Mr. Bob Wills Associate Editor The Raleigh Register Beckley, W. Va.

Dear Mr. Wills: In winding up the affairs of John T. McPherson, a late client, I ran across an old letter that may be of some historical interest. Billy Joe Kingley of the Roanoke Times has given me your name as one who is interested in the early history of the Virginias and, at his suggestion, I am calling this matter lo your attention in hope that you may have come across some record or have some knowledge, of the matter that will be helpful. My client, who died early this month, had lived practically all his life in the old ancestral home on the headwaters of the Blackwater River in a remote section not far from here in miles, but a great distance removed in manners, customs and way of life.

Like his ancestors, both on the McPherson and Ferguson side, he had lived by hunting and fishing and frapping with some little farming thrown in, but only enough to grow a few vegetables for the table. The McPhersons and appear to have been quite literate but somewbat lazy folks, or perhaps it would be better to say that they loved "life but took it quite easy, being well satisifed to live off the land and take what came their way. The letter referred lo at the outset was one written in 1815. It is dated Sunday, January 22 of lhat year in New Orleans, Louisiana and was written lo Sandy McPherson, Franklin County, Virginia, who was a great-great-grandfather of my late client. This is a copy of the letter: "Dear Nephew: "This is to report to you on some of the recent events and happenings in which 1 have played some small part and to presume upon our close kinship to ask a great favor of you.

"As you may have no doubt had wind of by this time, General Andy Jackson, with whose forces I have been serving as a scout, whipped the British- Army under General Edward Pakenham in a series of engagements near here within the last month. Two weeks ago today the dastardly English attacked our entrenchments here and were routed with fearful loss of life on their side. General Pakenham was, I have been told, killed and Ihe remnants of his army have fled this part of the country. This should pretty well wind up the present hostililies and teach England not to stir up Ihe hcalhen Red Men on our border against us again in the near future. "I had hoped to be on my way back to Virginia by now but this abominable weather and water here has put me hors de combat with an attack of the flux that I fear me may keep me inactive for some time to come.

Sometimes I fear I am going to die and other times I wish I would. "Meanwhile I worry about a rich cache of furs, the result) of my winter of trapping a year ago in the wilds of Greenbrier County west of the mountains. Would it be too much to ask of you to make a trip into that area and recover them for me. If you will I shall give you a quarter of their worth, and they should be worth considerable. There arc hundreds of fine beaver, mink, otter and muskrat pelts in the bundle.

"You should have no difficulty in locating them. They are stashed securely bundled and well tied in the branches of a thicket of pines where no interloper is likely to find them without The location is on the bank of a small slream lined wilh many pine and sycamore Irees along Ihe old pioneer-indian trail that runs from the New River across the mountains and to the Kanawha or lo Ihe Marshes of Coal River. "It is about 25 miles from the homes of Josiah Meadows and old Robert Lilly, if that venerable gentleman is still alive, on Bluestone River. You could spend some time with those friendly folk and then reach my cache of furs in about a day's time by horseback. The old pioneer trail leads from their place over big Flat Top mountain and down a small creek that abounds in beaver.

The trail bears north from that stream before crossing the pinoy-lined stream where my cache may be found. "It won't be hard to find for I have marked it well. At a ford where the trail crosses the piney stream I carved my name S. Ferguson, F. County, 1814 on a big river rock.

I carved the 4 backwards purposely as a directional marker. Take 150 steps in a straight line along the cross bar of the four in the direction indicated by its backwards configuration and you will find the fur cache in the thicket. "I had intended, of course, to bring them out myself last spring, but my horse frightened by a panther bolted over a cliff and broke his fool neck. After returning home I meant to go back for the furs, but as you know I was conscripted into the scouting service and couldn't. "So, nephew, would you please do this favor for me.

If you don't it will be just my luck to rot there. And I sometimes wonder what some future traveler who runs across the carved rock might think. You know how newspapers always twist, embellish a embroider the truth. It wouldn't surprise me if in some far distant time some newspaper reporter adept at sewing a vest onto a button didn't find this carved rock and write some far-felchcd tale about an S. Ferguson carving his gravestone as he lie dying afler being scalped by Indians or Ihrown from a horse.

Affectionately, Your Uncle Scotty Ferguson" Has such a rock, or any report of a rotted cache of furs been found or made in your area, Mr. Wills? Sincerely yours, I. M. Spufin Atlorney-al-Iaw I have written Mr. Spufin to tell him there is such a carved rock with that same backwards 4 in 1814 on Uie bank of Piney River where Beckley's sewage treatment plant is located at an old pioneer trail crossing.

I have invited Mr. Spufin to come and examine it taut have told him it is an insult to think that any newsman would make up a story about it being some kind of a death marker. Prayer For Today Eternal God, our gracious heavenly Father, come to us jusl where we arc and speak lo our hearts and minds. Where You find loneliness be our friend, our companion. Where You find heartache, anguish, anxiety, and trouble be our great burden bearer.

Where You find sickness, disease, and infirmity be our great physician. This is our prayer in Jesus' name. Amen. Joe Tom Tate, Worcester, president, Advent Christian General Conference. RoyCromfey Soys Reds Miscalculating Again On Czech Workers WASHINGTON (NEA) The Soviets may miscalculated badly in Czechoslovakia.

They have assumed the opposition lo Moscow rule was by a group of headstrong individuals. In their purges in Prague, the P.ussians have been concentrating on removing party "liberals" and their backers. They're reportedly moving in on university sludents, professors, newsmen, playwrights, novelists, magazine writers. The Russians have been assuming, according to reports, that once Ihis liberal crust is removed, loyal Czech labor unions will offer a strong base of men and women agreeable to obedience to Moscow. No doubt a sizable core of Czech intellectuals is harshly opposed to Soviet dictates.

But a careful study of data now arriving from Czechoslovakia suggcsls the Czech workingman may turn out to be an even more bitter antagonist. There is evidence union leadership is honeycombed with men strongly devoted lo sovereignty and self- determination for Czechoslovakia. They represent five million members. When union members are unhappy, Czech history shows, factory production suffers. There are slowdowns.

Workmanship is sloppy. The economy skids and slides. It was natural for Soviet leaders to assume the unions would be on their nide. In 1948, convinced by Soviet propaganda that with Communist rule workers would run the factories, unions organized the people's militia and were perhaps the key force in the Russian Communist take-over. In the years that followed, the trade unions were put carefully under Communist parly conlrol.

They have obedienlly carried out Moscow's wishes. Most union leaders are from the proletariat. By all the evidence the unions were a "safe" group. But things had been changing inside Uie labor movement. The factories were not taken over by the workers; they were taken over by the slate.

Members began lo believe the unions were being subverted. Union leaders and rank-and-file members became disillusioned. There has been a strong push from within to fight the "subservience" of the unions to the party. Union leaders have become the strong backers of the "liberalization" movement that flourished before the Russian invasion. Reports indicate union membership thus far, at least, has not been intimidated by the Soviet oc-1 cupation or the clampdowns by 'J secret police.

It can safely be said that if the union stance continues and grows it will be exceedingly difficult for Soviet armies to control Czechoslovakia, however much force they use..