Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 46

DETROIT FREE PRESSTUESDAY. APRIL 14. 1981 ,11 '( By Taro Yamasaki I uupwui jh X'lTf sljiiiiV'ilt'H- jHlllhVfiiif I il'fPiv I- II ill liiu ill I if I if -'Tni fay cv" 3Tr A PP MT ip i iv Mr America's problem today: It has no give in its garters The trouble with the country (here we go again) is that it has lost its elasticity. To explain this shortcoming one harkens to the era when men wore garters to hold their socks in place. Donning such equipment was a morning ritual, as important as tucking in the shirttail, and when the act had been performed, the lower shanks felt snugged and protected, and one set forth with vim and vigor, ready to take on all comers.

But when, Holy Toledo, the garters suddenly lost their bite, or grip or elasticity one felt as though he had been shorn of everything from the waist down and he was not to be entrusted with a business transaction involving more than three dollars. One presumes in his pristine innocence that the dear ladies suffered similar trauma when their elasticity IffH 4 1 iff MAM 11 went kaput, but this is such a delicate subject that we transfer it to our resident expert in such matters, the Hon. Nickie McWhirter, who will no doubt find some way, no matter how teensy-ween-sy, of blaming it on the men. But enough of this dilly-dallying. Let us return Robert Dunlap lost his leg when a sawed-off shotgun he was carrying went off during a robbery.

His sentence: 20 to 40 years. For their own safety, about 200 inmates of Jackson Prison are locked up in the protective custody of 7 Block. ree Press photographer Taro Yamasaki spent 10 days inside Jackson Prison, gathering stark impressions of life behind the bars of the world's largest walled prison. The inmates trusted him. They showed him their weapons, kept hidden from guards.

They told him stories of fear and violence and compared the prison to a jungle. One inmate admitted: "None of us are here for being nice guys Jackson's the end of the road." Yamasaki's photographs, which appeared in the Free Press from Dec. 14 to Dec. 20, Monday won for him the 1981 Pulitzer Prize in feature photography. It if I II I I I I One of several inmates who carry weapons shows his blade to Free Press photographer Taro Yamasaki.

to elasticity, loss of, as it applies to affairs of state. THERE WAS a time when, if business went to perdition in a handbasket, which is approximately what has occurred in Michigan, management had some options some elasticity, if you please. The owner of a factory could say to his employes, "Listen, gang, our sales volume has declined, our outgo is exceeding income, and we have to stir things up. So I am going to reduce your wages and cut my profit margin, and we are going to give the competition hell on the Wabash. Go get 'em!" Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, but at least free enterprise, as we called it, was exercised.

How things have changed. Today, that owner has probably passed on to a higher reward, and his plant is controlled by a conglomerate with headquarters in Topeka. Moreover, the workers belong to a union with headquarters in Schenectady, and they are protected by a contract with more clauses than the last will and testament of Andrew Carnegie. Any precipitous move toward a reduction in wages would cost $150,000 in legal fees before the case reached district court; so management either furloughs some of the workers, which is bad for the economy, or lowers the quality of its product, which turns out worse in the long run. But this isn't the half of it.

The conglomerate is owned by shareholders, most of whom invested because they pined for immediate dividends, and the plant in question is managed by an executive who understands that while planning is important, it isn't nearly as crucial to his survival as next week's bottom line in heavy black ink. In recent years, we have been told by the New York Times, the turnover in top management among American corporations has averaged about 30 percent, a revolving door policy largely propelled by the insistence on profits now, and let tomorrow take care of itself. No wonder the Japanese and the West Germans, among others, have been having us for breakfast. THE ELASTICITY has also been stretched out of the management of public affairs at all major levels, including education. We have the spectacle of Mayor Young of Detroit, who launched his career as a union organizer, eyeball to eyeball with organized policemen, firemen and all others who draw their pay from a shrinking purse.

He is telling them that their wages, which exceed the national averages in most instances, must be frozen or reduced, and they are telling him to go soak his noggin. It will be interesting to see how that confrontation comes out. State government has abandoned all pretext of wage adjustments to meet falling income, and not even David Stockman has had the temerity to suggest that federal employes, who remain legion, take less pay in these moments of financial stress and strain. And so it goes. The elasticity has gone out of the management of our affairs, and that is why our ankles are cold these days while our temperature is high.

Somehow, America must find a new way of holding up its socks. '-t -a irJf -Am 4C5 i A solitary figure cuts loose on the basketball court. Cleofus Isom, of Benton Harbor, serving a life term for rape, says he's been robbed six times, badly beaten eight times and stabbed once in a prison career spanning 19 years. He is protected in 7 Block. Compiled by JAMES FINKELSTEIN names faces Soviets won't let son visit ailing Hess was so intent on feeding a Lake Tahoe slot machine that she almost missed her $246,500 jackpot.

The casino management explained that the machine she was playing doesn't lock up after paying off, and that had she inserted just one more coin, she would have lost it. ALAN LADD's widow's swimming pool's heater was the source of a fire that damaged $205,000 worth of her Beverly Glen, home Sunday night. Nobody was hurt. PRINCE RAINIER and Princess Grace of Monaco were seen off to Honolulu Monday after a 10-day unofficial visit to Japan, during which they met Emperor Hirohito and ribbon-cut a Monacan art exhibition at Kobe. Lockhorns Last days of freedom Former Yippie Hoffman, his companion Johanna Lawrenson and A.

I I 4 AS THE TITANIC was about to get gouged by an iceberg that fateful day in 1912, a dining steward, setting the breakfast table, stuffed a porcelain saucer in his pocket and ran for his life. He was one of the 705 who were rescued more than 1,500 died and the four-inch demitasse saucer, now worth $20,000 because it's the only china saved from the doomed vessel, was on display last weekend in Los Angeles for the 69th anniversary of the sinking. Then disaster struck again: The piece vanished. There's a $500 reward, police say. JERALD F.

terHORST, who resigned as President Ford's press secretary and is now a Ford Motor public-relations guy, will address the Society of Professional Journalists Thursday as they gather at McGregor Conference Center to observe Wayne State University's Journalism Day. Several other media biggies are also slated from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., with terHorst at about 1:30. Call the journalism department for further information at 577-2627 between 9 and 5. RALPH NADER declared a truce Sunday and invited scions of Big Business to a May 18 conference on saving legal costs, to be held in Washington.

Nader explained he wants to help businesses save money in legal fees paid to outside law firms, thereby helping hold down prices paid by consumers. It'll cost $150 per corporate chieftain. RUDOLF HESS' son says Soviet authorities vetoed a visit Monday to his father, who he believes is near death in a British military hospital in Berlin. The British say Hess, 86, a prisoner for his Nazi war crimes since 1946, has pneumonia, but Wolf Ruediger Hess, 43, a Munich architect, wants to check on his dad, claiming he has information that his dad's health has considerably worsened. The Span-dau prison is governed by the U.S., Britain, France and Russia, and Hess said the Soviet warden vetoed the visit.

KING EDWARD Ill's 14th Century marriage 4 contract, thought to be the earliest such con-4 tract of any Prince of Wales, fetched $35,200 on the plush auction blocks of Sotheby's in London Monday. The 1326 document sealed the then-prince's marriage to his cousin Philippe, much as the 1981 -model Prince of Wales, Prince Charles, has arranged to wed Lady Diana Spencer this July. PRINCESS ANNE, elsewhere in royalty, declared how "very boring" it is to be pregnant and that it's an "occupational hazard of being a wife." The 30-year-old daughter of Queen Elizabeth, interviewed at her exceedingly boring 730-acre estate in Gloucestershire, also protested to British TV she's just "the slave labor around the place GRACE STEBLAY, 22, of Fremont, 4 Hoffman's son amerika QUDIIU kilt? WUIIIDIQIIVO Center, a counter-culture place in Rowe, Mass. Hoffman, who hid out for years in upstate New York as "Barry Freed" until he surrendered Sept. 4, 1980, is to begin serving a three-year jail I tnrm Ann 21 tor narcot- ics offenses.

AP Photo 'I KNOW IT'S ONlLY T0E6PAY, 0OT YOU'VE At-gEAY" SPOILEP MY WEEKEND 1.