“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.
July 23, 1959
THE BROKEN STAFF
Bread once was called the “Staff of Life.” The dietary habits of early days were formed by the crude conditions of life. The product of local agriculture – be it wheat, corn, rye, millet or rice – reached the table as porridge, as fried cakes, and oftenest, as a baked product with good keeping qualities.
Milk in its durable form is cheese. For centuries, in many lands, there was no more typical meal than bread and cheese.
It still makes a hearty meal, if the cheese is not an adulterated “cheese food”, and if the bread is the genuine article; a hearty, dark, nourishing loaf made of whole grains ground and baked.
Year by year, per capita consumption of bread in the United States is falling. Over the same period, bakers have steadily reduced the amount of wheat in our loaf of bread. They have replace it with chemicals to make it “stay fresh longer”, chemicals to make it hold more water and thus give it weight without food value.
Has it ever occurred to the bakers that the on fact may be the cause of the other; that people are buying less bread because there is no longer anything to eat in it?
Even the “whole wheat” on the shelf is the same flaccid article with some brown dye and a few flakes of bran.
It is our personal conviction that the man who invented the bolting of white flour, thus removing the vitamins and minerals from our daily bread, turned loose a host of degenerative diseases upon humankind.
White bread or black once separated manor house from cottage in England, just as the pallid cheeks of Milady distinguished her from the peasant girls with their (vulgarly!) rosy and sun-browned skin! Did one help cause the other? The traveler leaving England is startled to see the pale faces of English children give way to the ruddy cheeks of Scottish tykes, who are raised on oatmeal rather than white bread. The Germans and the Scandinavians eat dark bread, and their children have roses in their cheeks. In France there are again, both white bread and pale infants.
What does the American farmer do? He feeds his hogs and cattle whole grains, and buys white bread for his children!
“Vitamin-enriched” on a loaf of bread is generally a fraud. It may indicate only that a bottle of fish oil was waved over it. Is it “enriching” bread to put back a miniscule fraction of the qualities which have been taken out of the flour? (What do they do with the wheat germ oil they take out of the bread? Veterinarians give it to animals that cannot get young due to dietary deficiencies.)
If they wanted, American bakers could produce a loaf, designed by university research, that is near-white in color but is re-inforced with soybean proteins and milk solids, and compares with the best “black” breads in the world.
If they wanted, American housewives could buy at their grocer's a five-pound sack of HONEST-TO-GOODNESS WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR put out by the Pillsbury company, with an excellent recipe for real wheat bread on the back. (This is not an ad.)
Instead, we let the baker – wholesalers double their share of a loaf of bread in the last ten years (they get 11.2¢ out of an average 19.3¢) while the farmer's share (down to 3¢) has been CUT IN HALF in the same period. The bakers may not have enriched our bread, but it has certainly enriched them!
Tomorrow they may discover a new chemical which will permit them to feed us “bread” with even less wheat in it. Meanwhile the bins are running over and we have no place to put the surplus wheat. It's just a suggestion; but WHAT ABOUT PUTTING IT INTO THE BREAD WE EAT?
July 30, 1959
A VOLGA PERFORMANCE
The Vice President, who is still referred to as “Tricky Dicky” by those who know him, has just made the headlines in a big way. The first thing to remember is that Dick Nixon is running for President.
Since his first campaign for Congress in California, when he ANSWERED A CLASSIFIED AD seeking a candidate, his technique has been to round up the money where it was necessary to get it (remember his tearful explanation on TV of the “Expense Accounts” he was accepting when he was a candidate for the second-highest office in the land?) and then to hire a large advertising and public relations agency to spread the lie that his opposition (all of whom have been honorable and patriotic Americans of the highest type) were a bunch of Communist agents or the next thing to it.
Witch-hunting is an easy road to power; and the taste of power calls for more. Once in office, Dick Nixon supported his good friend Joseph J. McCarthy in his campaign of terror and intimidation against hundreds of innocent people whom he accused of being Communists without, in most cases, a shred of evidence. The publicity ruined the careers of many of these people; true or untrue, the accusation stuck; a few committed suicide.
As opposed to an Eisenhower who is a man of sterling character and has really tried (between vacations) to develop more liberal “Modern Republicanism”, Dick Nixon has been the darling boy of the intrenched giant corporations; and his election in 1960 would herald an era of monopoly and profitgrabbing that would make recent years look tame.
Do you recall Murray Chottiner, the California real estate dealer? Nixon was his biggest deal. After he helped sell Nixon to the nation, he moved his activities to Washington and set up shop in Nixon's office, promising favors and selling influence OVER THE VICE PRESIDENT'S TELEPHONE. This administration's record has been so foul with instances of appointed officials selling their powers and wearing two hats so as to enrich themselves, that the Murray Chottiner scandal was hardly a ripple.
So now the great Nixon-Nikita squabble in front of the TV cameras. When Mr. Koslov was in the country recently, Nixon quarreled with him publicly, and seemed to like the public reaction. He was lagging badly in public favor for the 1960 election, and decided on a calculated risk. (The recent Gallup poll shows that the public prefers a Stevenson-Kennedy ticket to a Nixon-Rockefeller combination by about 56% to 44%.)
The hope was that he might make himself a big hero on TV by shaking his fist at Mr. Kruschev. The risk was grave; if he miscalculated, the bill would be paid in American blood.
Everyone knows that Mr. Kruschev is capable of anything. “To think”, commented the Editor's wife, “that this jolly, fat little man is the Butcher of Budapest; it makes one shudder!”
What surprised everyone was that we had someone on our team sufficiently irresponsible to engage in public name-calling with such a man. To “stand up to him” does not require mud-slinging. The art of diplomacy has not evolved because diplomats enjoy being hypocrites, smiling when there is little to smile about, or using courtesy and restraint in dealing with men who may tomorrow be our enemies.
The men who reach positions of world leadership are often sensitive to the point of paranoia about slights to their personal and national pride; certainly in the privacy of council chambers, and a thousandfold more in public. History gives us numberless instances where a public “loss of face” has meant an end to discussion and a beginning to hostilities.
Dick Nixon is apparently willing to take the rest, because he is running for office and the stakes are high. Before election time, it would be well for the voters to consider well whether WE are willing to take such risks.