Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one” - A.J. Liebling
My father Bob Wilson took this to heart, and bought one and started his own newspaper, the Prairie Post of Maroa, Illinois in 1958, and ran it until he died in 1972. It never had a circulation of more than 2500 or so, but every week, he would fire off editorials at everyone and everything from local events to the actions of the nations of the world.
He may have been a Quaker peace activist in a Republican district, but his love and support of the farming communities garnered him enough respect that he eventually ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1962, though he lost. (He might have tried again, had he not died of an accident while only 49.) Many of his views ring true today. And he might have been willing to change the ones that fell behind the times. Although raised in the casual racism of the 1920s and 1930s, at the age of 15 he took stock of what he was being taught and discarded much of it as being wrong, and lived his life with respect for all.
I decided to transcribe his old editorials (I may make a book for some of my relatives) and every once in a while I will repost one here, as a view of how the world has changed wildly, or remained stubbornly the same.
April 12, 1962
FEED CHINA NOW!
Reports out of the mainland of China indicate there is in progress a famine comparable to the worst in the sorrowful centuries of Chinese history.
STARVE YOUR ENEMIES, SAITH THE LORD..... It isn't in the Bible, is it? Somehow, it wouldn't sound quite right there.
We sincerely believe the time has come to sell some of our surplus grain to the Chinese.
Actually, it is rather ridiculous that we must explain such a statement. Have all of us sunk so low that we must find reasons of selfish national policy for doing that to which the highest teachings of our religion would prompt us?
The reasons are there, of course. We have food, and they have hunger, and all the logic in the world will not persuade a starving child we have a moral right to let him starve.
Thus does hunger breed hatred and despair, reinforcing the conditions which brought Communism to China in the first place.
Further, it is time the Chinese peasants learn that our system can produce two things that theirs cannot; more food than we can eat, and the compassion to share it with those who have not.
April 19, 1962
STEEL VS. THE PEOPLE
We have just seen what may be the most resolute use of presidential power in the defense of the public interest which has taken place in this century.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy has in the first year of his administration demonstrated that he is not “Anti-business”. He wants a strong and growing business community, because when business makes money it pays larger taxes, and taxes support government.
In the recent wage negotiations, Washington intervened with an appeal to the unions not to demand higher hourly rates. This would tend to stabilize the economy and stop the wage-price spiral that is destroying our prosperity.
The Steelworkers Union answered this call on their patriotism by settling for a contract which was, in the President's own words, “moderate and non-inflationary”.
Then, like a bomb, came the announcement by Chairman Roger M. Blough of U.S. Steel that they were raising the price of steel by $6.00 per ton!
U.S. Steel is the pace-setter in a steel industry that in mockery of “free competition”, matches price increases to the penny. Big Steel is a force so gigantic that government typically would have grumbled and subsided. John F. Kennedy came out fighting. The President of the United States went to the people on television, and, in a moment of towering rage, denounced “a tiny handful of steel executives, whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility (with) utter contempt for the interests of 185 millions Americans.”
Turning from the television cameras, Kennedy picked up his telephone, and within hours had committed every executive and legislative arm of government he could command to an all-out defense of the public interest.
The Anti-Trust machinery of government had filed suits within two days. Both houses of Congress announced plans for investigations. The Defense Department cut off all purchases of steel at the increased prices, and shifted contracts to the few small producers who had not yet raised prices.
Roger Blough cam on television himself to call the increase “necessary”, a patent falsehood considering the record profits in the industry. More open lies were told as corporation presidents denied their own previous statements that a price increase was not necessary, and lined up behind U.S. Steel for their share of the gravy.
Hours later, the giant Steel Industry had been brought to its knees.
The greedy captains of “Big Steal” will never understand they have been saved – against their will – from destroying the system that made them rich.
The Communist Revolution spreads across the Earth displacing Capitalism because Capitalists are rigidly dedicated to their “sacred” right to unlimited exploitation of their fellow man.
President Kennedy's courageous use of the powers of elected government may open the way toward an economic system which can survive and meet the Communist challenge without the necessity of rigid price controls.
This would be something able to meet new conditions, while retaining old values. Call it, if you will, a CAPITALISM WITH SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY.