The Mail-Journal, Volume 7, Number 32, Milford, Kosciusko County, 9 September 1970 — Page 7

t L*' I jTlm TfaiJ i PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY The Milford Mall (Eet 1888) Syracuse-Wawasee Journal (Eat 1907) Consolidated Into The Mail-Journal Feb. 15, 1962 DEMOCRATIC ARCHIBALD E. BAUMGARTNER, Editor and Publisher DELLA BAUMGARTNER, Business Manager Box 8 Syracuse, Ind., — 46567

Adolescence

LAUGHING uproariously one minute, dissolved in a torrent of tears the next—this is the adolescent. A period of physical change, tensions. frustrations, rebellion against authority and a searching for identity, it is a wonder we all made it through this period in our lives. But we did, and so will your child. '' I■ ' ' ■ Insecurity, particularly when related to a youngster’s relationships with peers, often causes the adolescent to feel completely rejected. The threat to leave home, parents and temporarily alienated friends is common. A pediatrician recalls that his own daughter, at the age of 13, threatened to

Laws. That Don't Work

Gun control laws, of themselves, do little to retard the growth of crime. Os the nation’s twelve largest cities, four were covered by total firearms registration during the first half of 1969. Four more were under local or State laws requiring permits to buy or transfer handguns. One had an ordinance covering all firearms transfers. Three of the nation's largest cities, by contrast, had no local or State laws rigidly restricting the sale of firearms. Among the cities with controls, New York City. Chicago, Washington, D. C. and San Francisco have, perhaps, the stiffest firearms laws. In these cities, the homicide rate during the first half of 1969 ranged from a six per cent increase in New York to a 102 per cent increase in San Francisco. Five of the nation's largest cities with gun controls of varying stringency showed alarming increases in homicides, ranging-from 53

Pitfalls Os Direct Election

As proposals for change in the method of electing a man to fill the highest office in the land come under closer scrutiny, the faults of the Electoral College diminish by comparison. For example, upon investigation, the merits of direct election of a president as provided in the Bayh amendment now before Congress prove highly specious as numerous students of government and the law point out. For one thing, direct election of a President could lead to numerous splinter parties and the weakening of the two-party system which has given stability to our Republic and its constitutional government ever since its founding. In addition to weakening the two-party system, direct election of a President could creat massive problems of recounting close elections — problems that might prove disastrous to the elective process. In contrast to the Electoral College system, under which vote counting

18-Year-Old Vote Law

Indiana is one of the states in which the question of the constitutionality of the law recently passed by the Congress concerning extending the vote to citizens 18 years old and older remains to be tested. Indiana's Constitution provides that the franchise is held by every United States citizen 21 or older who has lived six months in the state, 60 days in the township and 30 days in the precinct or ward. The action by the Congress was not an amendment to the U. S. Constitution, but was merely an act of Congress. An amendment to the Constitution would have required approval by two thirds of the states before becoming effective. Two states, Georgia and Kentucky, already allow 18-year-old citizens to vote. Other states have different voting

EDITORIALS

leave home over an argument with her brother regarding who was to use the bathroom first at bedtime! At this age, youngsters need lots of support from parents. Too often we hear adolescents lament today that they just cannot talk to their parents. Try to develop the habit of having a period *set aside during the day when you can provide the opportunity for your daughter or son to talk and discuss their problems. Encourage the child to bring out in the open his fears and obsessions, concerns over identity, body image, sex and relationships with friends. Remember, it is agonizing to live with a problem and be unable to talk about it with someone. „

per cent in Cleveland to 18 per cent in Philadelphia. The other three of the nation’s largest cities—Los Angeles, Houston and Milwaukee—having the least restrictive gun laws came up with these figures for the first half of 1969. Los Angeles, murders up 14 per cent; Houston, murders decreased five per cent; Milwaukee, murders decreased 18 per cent. The foregoing are facts from figures compiled from the FBI Uniform Crime Report. They bear out the belief of Dr. Bruce Danto, director of the Detroit Suicide Prevention Center, that “gun control is not the answer’’ to the rising tide of violence in cities. The sad truth is that many freedom destroying laws aimed at law-abiding citizens are passed in an emotional fury; and, after passage, no one ever takes the time to appraise their effectiveness. It is much easier to pass another law than to remove a bad law from the state books.

disputes are limited to individual states, direct national election of a President would open a Pandora’s box of probable abuses that chill legal scholars and other students of this issue. Theodore H. W’hite writes of the direct election method: “To enforce honest votecounting in all the nation’s 170,000 precincts, national policing becomes necessary. So, too, do uniform federal laws on voter qualifications . . . Residence requirements, too, must be made uniform in all states. The centralization required breaches all American tradition.’’ The more one studies the alternatives to the Electoral College system of electing U.S. Presidents, which has worked successfully for 200 years, the more the wisdom of our forefathers becomes apparent. There are many pitfalls in the path of liberty and selfgovernment. Studies are showing that direct election of the President of the United States is one of them. *

authority in their constitutions. The legislatures of some states, it is thought, will take steps toward lowering the voting age. Four states, Alaska, Hawaii, Florida and Connecticut, are submitting the proposal to a voter referendum this year. The Federal law has not yet received the official opinion on compliance from the Indiana Attorney General. ' Recognizing the trend, and the vote of a majority of the members of the Congress, in our opinion it would be wise for members of the 1971 session of the Indiana Legislature to consider taking steps early in the session toward an amendment to the Indiana Constitution to provide for 18-year-olds voting in future elections. —Wakarusa Tribune

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HOOSIER DAY

Select Trees For Fail Planting By Their Colors

IF YOU PLAN to add more life and color to your lawn or acreage, now is the time to do it. Soon the young trees in the nurseries that you buy for fall planting, will be putting on their fall colors. Colored foliage enables the selection of the tree you wish. Here are some hearty varieties and their colors of trees that grow well in Indiana: SUGAR MAPLES - Orange, scarlet and yellow. RED MAPLE — Bright scarlet and orange. SWEET GUM - Crimson. OAKS — Scarlet, red, white, Wack and pin oaks — Various red, russet and orange. TULIP — Sparkling yellow. The Birch is beautiful but cannot be recommended for Indiana because it is susceptible to borer and has a short life. Don’t forget to work the evergreens into your lawn tree pattern. WE PUBLISH here a few paragraphs about trees in Southern Indiana Uplands from an article in the Indiana Business

Special Report From W ashington

WASHINGTON - A relentless lobbying campaign has been waged by America’s biggest electric company to gain permission to gobble up its competitors. The effort has ranged from calling on "malcontents” to work against local officials, to promises of free ball park lighting for Little Leaguers, to congressional pressure on President Nixon. The costs for this amazing campaign have come directly out of the pockets of those who use electricity from the American Electric Power Co. The outcome of the firm’s lobbying effort could set a pattern for electric power producers all over the United States where one small company after another is falling to the giants. The mastermind of the American Electric s campaign is dynamic Don Cook, president of the company and a persuasive friend of exPresident Johnson. Ironically, Cook formerly headed the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is supposed to regulate big corporations. At issue is Cook’s plan to take over Columbus and Southern Ohio Electric Co. Cook contends that his big outfit can operate more efficiently and cut rates to Ohio consumers STAFF DISPUTES EX-BOSS The hard-pressed SEC staff is courageously standing up to their powerful former boss. They insist in a brief that Cook’s merger plans would have "serious anti-competitive effects .. . detrimental to the public.’* They also dispute Cook’s rosy rate predictions. Now Cook has pulled all stops to get the commission itself to overrule the staff and let the merger go through. The magnetic executive even called upon Ohioans to “write to the SEC ... if you want to hasten” the promised rate decrease. Rep. Bill Harsha, R-Ohio, quickly responded by urging President Nixon in a personal letter to “recommend speedy SEC approval” of the merger, although Harsha knows full well the SEC is supposed to be independent of this kind of pressure.

By FRANK WHITE

Review. Its author is Robert M. Menke of basketball fame and a trustee of I. U. He said: “The virgin woods of the 23 million acre Hoosier wilderness was dark and majestic in the early 19 Century. The giant poplars had trunks 12 feet in diameter and rose cathedral-like 90 feet to the first limb and on up to 200 feet to parapets of small branches. “These trees were eventually rolled into ravines and burned. By 1840 over 1000 saw mills hummed in the state, and a million dollar wood working industry was already creating the wealth that would be multiplied many times to make Indiana one of the great industrial states. “Lumbering reached a climax in 1899 when 1,036,999,000 board feet of lumber were harvested in making Indiana the greatest hardwood producing area in the USA and the world. “Forestry’s economic base was peripheral during the depression and war years. In 1940-41, 80,000

acres burned with no Civilian Conservation Corps to beat out the flames. . . . .“With a million acres of agricultural land converted annually in the USA to nonfarm use and with additional pressures to convert forest land to private uses, experts predict more aggravated local shortages of various species of saw logs by the year 2,000.” Menke quoted the famed Indian Chief Tecumseh who said: “Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the clouds, and the great sea as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his Children?” You And Social Security Q— I understand that Medicare does not pay the first $52 of my hospital bill. But doesn’t this amount count for the SSO yearly deductible on my doctor bills? A — No. The two deductibles are separate. Therefore, even if you have been hospitalized, you still must incur at least SSO in doctor bills before Medicare will pay toward the doctor bills.

Both Ohio Senators, Republican William Saxbe and Democrat Steve Young, joined the chorus, along with Ohio Gov. John Rhodes, 10 Ohio Congressmen and a number of Ohio mayors. Some mayors simply used form letters provided for them and signed their names. Meanwhile, Cook’s strategists dispatched one of the nation’s most prestigious troubleshooters, Cyrus Vance, to parley with the Justice Department ’s antitrust head, Richard McLaren on troublesome antitrust aspects of the merger. SPECIAL PLEADER The able and articulate Vance, who was selected by President Johnson to help solve both the Dominican crisis and the Viet Nam impasse, pleaded American Electric’s views eloquently before the hard-headed McLaren. Vance won a temporary respite, but the Justice Department has now made clear its opposition to the merger. Despite Cook’s strategic genius, the SEC staff stood adamant against the takeover. Rumors began to spread that the SECmight rule against the electric colossus, and Cook turned on the heat again. He won a reopening of the case on grounds there were new and important witnesses to be heard. One of them turned out to be John Trackman, president of a huge Swiss-owned firm which depends on Cook for American business. Not surprisingly, he supported Cook. Another witness produced by Cook was Prof. Herbert H. Woodson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who also spoke fully in favor of the merger. Under cross-examination, SEC attorney Bernard Nash inquired: “Are you being retained by AEP for a fee to testify?” “Yes.” replied the distinguished professor. In addition, Woodson holds the Philip Spam Professorship of Energy Processing at MIT. Sporn just happens to be Cook’s predecessor as president of American Electric. The new testimony has now delayed the case so much that it may be 1972 before it is

Congressional Comer: John Brademas Reports From Washington

Crime Rate Going Down For First Time In Years

There was good news and bad last week in society’s battle against crime. Residents of the nation’s capital heard for the first time in years that the local crime rate is going down. Washington. D. C. Police Chief Jerry Wilson reported that 12.8 per cent fewer people were robbed, raped and murdered, this July than last. For six months now crime has been trending down, and there may be grounds for cautious optimism in our crime-plagued Capital. We don’t know yet what’s behind this good news, but one thing is sure: part of the credit must certainly go to Mayor Walter Washington and Chief Wilson, whose progressive policies are starting to take hold. On the national scene, by contrast, the news is grim. According to figures just released by the FBI, your chances and mine of being some criminal’s victim have doubled in the last ten years. Last year there were almost two million burglaries, three hundred thousand robberies and fifteen thousand murders in this country. It would be difficult to overstate the terror, suffering and loss these figures represent. The sheer volume of this criminal toll must remind us of the need for clarity about our system of justice. Clearly we must do more than talk if we are to make our streets safe and our lives secure. To stop crime we must combine longrange preventive efforts with a comprehensive law enforcement program right now. JUSTICE BURGER S VIEW Chief Justice Warren Burger of the Supreme Court made a dramatic contribution with his speech this month before the American Bar Association in St. Louis. Chief Justice Burger observed that our local police forces are our first line of defense against crime, but he added that they are just part of the whole mechanism of justice. The courts, the bailiffs, the prisons and the parole are just as important in society’s continuing fight for ordered liberty. What the Chief Justice did was force us to look at the way our courts are being overworked and under-administered. Considering their importance to our way of life, our courts are probably the best bargain for our tax follars that we have. The total cost of all operations of the

decided. Meanwhile, Ohio’s independent power suppliers cannot make long-range plans to keep their customers safe from power blackouts. STIRRING UP MALCONTENTS On the other hand. American Electric is far ■ from dormant. It is moving ahead busily with campaigns to buy out small municipal power firms. Evidence in the 12,000 pages of SEC records on the case show how AEP strategists planned “to find a group of malcontents” in Dover, Ohio, to help them take over the municipal system. “Feed weaknesses ... of the (municipal) system to malcontents.” says a formal memorandum obtained by this column. “Permit this group to present the problems of the (Dover) system to the Dover public, undermining present leadership and stirring up general discontent. “Permit them to feed only those problems to the public that Ohio Power Co. (an AEP subsidiary) can solve for them by taking over the system " At Willard, Ohio, another town where the electric combine wanted to take over the municipal system, the company’s strategists* decided that “when properly pressed (we wall) agree to light two softball fields.” And at Caldwell, Ohio, a third town where AEP has worked to get control, an AEP memo orders its functionaries to try to “become confidential writh” some “member of the official family . . . who would actually work with us.” Throughout the scheming there is talk of setting up citizens’ committees which would be publicly free of American Electric control but which would actually be "fed information" by the company. So far, despite the elaborate and costly planning, most of the small towns have held on to their independent companies, the American Electric memos complain. Note: Don Cook declined to return this column’s calls. However, his vice president for public affairs, Harold Johnson, said memos referred to by this column did not reflect over-all company policy. “There is no undercover work of any kind," said Johnson.

Federal Judiciary is just $l2B million a year. This is about the amount the Pentagon spends every twelve hours. But Chief Justice Burger warns that we are “trying to operate the courts with cracker barrel corner grocer methods,” and he is right. In the large cities tens of thousands of summonses go unserved for lack of manpower. For lack of professional management, thousands of manhours of time—the valuable time of wise and well-trained men—go to waste. For lack of money and effort legal decisions are catalogued and researched manually, the same way they have been for centuries. Surely if we cared deeply enough for justice, peace and order, surely if we thought through the needs of our times, we would put our best computer programmers and our best systems engineers to work on such problems. * The major deterrent to crime is swift justice: a quick arrest, a prompt trial, a just sentence and effective rehabilitation. Surely, then, it is a scandal that thousands of men are kept in our obsolete prisons for fifteen months or two years while waiting for trial. If a criminal does not reach trial until months after his arrest all connection between his crime and his punishment is lost. INDIANA REFORM One constructive move to bring our courts up to date is under way right now here in Indiana: a question on the November 3 ballot will ask Hoosier voters to support reform in the matter of selection of Indiana judges. Under the new method, judges would be appointed by a nonpolitical panel, and their appointments would be subject to confirmation by the people. Whether or not this measure is approved, the interest demonstrated in it by thousands of Hoosiers has raised the stature of judges so much that a record number of candidates will be on the ballot for the supreme and appellate courts of Indiana. Such interest in our courts is absolutely vital to maintaining a free society. As in the past, so in the future, I shall continue to press for legislation to modernize - and strengthen our system of courts. For a genuinely free society is one rooted in law, and an effectively functioning judiciary is indispensable to the operation of the law.

By JACK ANDERSON