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.
May 17, 1962
AN INVITATION TO DEBATE
On Wednesday, May 2, there came before the House of Representatives in Washington what may be one of the most significant questions to be discussed this year, but little notice was taken of it by the regular news media.
On that day, that legislative body resolved itself into “ The Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union” and devoted four hours to discussion of H.R. 11040.
It is really unfair of his detractors to claim that in twelve years in the United States Congress the Incumbent Congressman from the 22nd District, Mr. William L. Springer of Champaign, has never made a speech on the floor of the House. On May 2 Mr. Springer did make a speech. Of course, we do not know what he actually said, because almost every time he rose, he first asked permission of the other member of the House to “revise and extend” his remarks afterward.
His remarks were in support of the bill above mentioned, which as a member of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce he had helped to prepare. Since we believe the Incumbent Congressman to be honorable and well-disposed, we can only assume that he was not really aware of what was taking place.
The President had requested legislation to form an agency to own and direct the satellite communications system. The Committee scrapped his suggestions and produced, instead, a monstrous proposal which in effect handed over to a private monopoly not only the entire system developed 90% by taxpayers' money, but all the immeasurable future profits from this new system as well.
As Congressman Ryan of New York inquired, “Are we setting off into the space age with the greatest give-away of all time?”
Although he admits that “Experience with satellite communications at this point is almost nonexistent,” our Incumbent Congressman describes as “Reasonable” and “workable” a bill which insures that the government will share in all of the expenses but none of the profits from future space communications systems; a privately-owned corporation with a little window-dressing of government participation which will mean exactly nothing because the way is made easy for absolute control by one corporation... a corporation whose lobbyists have lately been making themselves agreeable to the members of the committee and of the Congress in general...
A little background is essential in understanding the struggle. Reams of pure hogwash entered the pages of the Congressional Record about the sanctity of private profit and free enterprise. History shows us that the whole communications industry has been built on grants of power and outright gifts from the federal treasury. These people talk a lot about “government meddling” but they have somehow hung onto telephone and telegraph rights which in every other modern nation belong to the government and make huge profits... while they have stuck the taxpayer with supporting the postal department, which is very difficult to make a profit on.
In 1845 the first telegraph message was flashed over a system developed by Mr. Morse with money given him by the federal government. Congress somehow failed to vote additional funds to make the system pay off after it was proven it would work... and then permitted a private corporation to take over and rake in the dough.
After World War I the United States Navy possessed a worldwide telegraphic communications system. Congress decided to give it to the private profit companies despite President Woodrow Wilson's courageous attempt to keep the telephone and telegraph industry under public ownership.
After World War II the United States military found themselves with a system of their own. This time the investment in operating equipment was 115 million dollars. This was in competition with the 52 million dollar system owned by the private companies. Result; the government scrapped their system and the 115 million of taxpayers funds it represented!
Now we are invited to take part in the fourth – and most fabulous – giveaway of federal funds and authority. Satellite communications are based on the fact that radio and TV electrical impulses travel best in straight lines, and the curve of the earth limits their range unless they “bounce” off a cloud or something else. That “something else” could be a big balloon covered with metal foil. Hundreds of them can be shot into orbit (the government pays for the rockets that boost them up there, of course) and very suddenly we will have radio-telephone messages and TV picture images flashing across the world as clearly as they now travel across a county.
The profit potential is fantastic; Lloyd Berkner, formerly Director of the Brookhaven Nuclear Institute on Long Island, recently declared that under this system, a long-distance call to any point in the world would not cost the company over ten cents. (What the company charge you would be a different matter.) Big shots from the communications industry shortly thereafter descended on Mr. Berkner and tried every sort of persuasion to get him to publicly withdraw this statement. He refused.
What is this communications industry to which we are asked to give so huge a slice of our future? It is largely American Telephone & Telegraph, also known as The Bell System. Smaller competitors include R.C.A., Western Union, and I.T. & T., but the Bell System is so gigantic that it can enforce its will on these little companies, and is in effect a communications monopoly.
Just how large, is almost impossible for the average man to believe. The A.T. & T. is smooth, quiet, and apparently spends vast sums on public relations, both to build a “favorable image” of the company, and to smother unfavorable news, which even extends to securing a total “black-out” in the big papers and magazines of testimony before Congressional hearings revealing exactly how powerful they really are.
The total assets of the Bell System are larger than those of the three next largest corporations in the country; U.S. Steel, Standard Oil of New Jersey and General Motors. The fact that any of those three is almost big enough to defy the government itself has been well established. The A.T. & T. is bigger than all three of them put together!
The profits reported by this super-giant last year, after their accountants were through tucking money away in all sorts of loopholes, was still a world record; one billion, three hundred million dollars.
The annual income of the Bell System is larger than the total public revenues of the five wealthiest states in the union; from the other end, they take in more in a year than do the governments of the thirty-two poorest states in the union! Their income is larger than the total public revenues of Canada and Sweden combined; or one-half as large as that of the entire United Kingdom!
The President understands the dangers in forming any corporate entity in which this giant would take part, and he has asked that safeguards be provided to prevent them from seizing control. The present bill offers a pretense of doing so, but one after another of the best minds in the House of Representatives rose to tear that pretense to shreds and label Mr. Springer's bill a fraud on the American public.
Both Western Union and the United States Department of Justice have pointed out that the large degree of financial interest offered to A.T. & T., the degree to which it would be the largest user of facilities, and the manner in which competing companies are dependent on A.T. & T. for equipment would combine to make this a private monopoly under direct control of the Bell System even if they did not elect one single member to its board of directors!
Congressman Emmanuel Celler of New York declared, “A.T. & T. has successfully avoided regulation on earth. Divine guidance will be necessary to regulate A.T. & T. if it is permitted to expand its domain into space.”
According to law, they are supposed to be regulated. Mr. Springer pretends that this new endeavor will be regulated by the Federal Communications Commission. This is an amazing assumption. Is he aware that in the 26 years of its history, the FCC has never held a general rate hearing on Bell System rates? Is he aware than in 1958 the House Antitrust Committee declared that the FCC “has neglected to establish fundamental principles or standards by which to judge the reasonableness of Bell System's interstate telephone rates”?
How could a federal regulatory commission so totally fail in the mission for which it was designed? For some years after President Roosevelt established the various commissions, they were honest and acted to regulate in the public interest. Then, under the administration just passed, vacancies to these bodies were filled by the appointment of people from the very industries they were supposed to regulate; the wolves, in other words, were given jobs as sheepherders.
When you consider the 1.3 billion annual profit of A.T. & T., and the fact the only control over them is exercised by a handful of men on the FCC; ordinary men living on rather modest salaries, you may get some idea that the operations of Billie Sol Estes are peanuts compared to those of A.T. & T.
The usual fog has been raised about rushing the job “so the Russians will not get there first.” Congressman Clem Miller answered this when he pointed out, “Research and development, I am informed, are proceeding at top speed – almost entirely under Government auspices, of course... enactment of this legislation will not hasten the date on which the system becomes operational by one day.”
At the same time Bell is rushing a bill that would give them control of space communications forever on the basis of their projected system of low-flying balloons to “bounce” messages from, the Army is proceeding with a system of its own. This “Advent” system consists of much higher satellites which are active repeaters of the messages aimed at it, and have much longer life and greater capacity. In fact, General Thames of the Signal Corps, who is in charge, has stated that with slight engineering changes, the system he is developing would have almost unlimited capacity and could handle all the civilian messages beamed at it without interfering with military use. However, he adds, the Signal Corps “has not been asked to do so”!
Obviously, to do so would shortchange A.T. & T. of a few billion more each year on world-wide telephone calls that would cost them ten cents and cost you Heaven knows what. A Rand Corporation study for the government concluded that on a conservative basis, A.T. & T. is already raking in a 66% per year profit on investment on its overseas communications; yes, the figure is sixty-six percent!
Also, you may be sure that if Bell is permitted to put its low-efficiency foil-balloon system into operation, they will not move to introduce any new development until they have milked every possible nickel out of the old. Witnesses before Senator Russell Long's subcommittee gave illustrations of equipment which Bell kept off the market for years until they were ready for them; this includes one-piece telephones, modern switching equipment, and the dial telephone itself.
Declared Congressman Kowalski of Connecticut, “Technical development is not being impeded by the absence of commercial organization, and it will not be. Let us not hurry to give away this national asset, but keep it in the people's hands, at least until events have informed our judgement.”
Congresswoman Mrs. Green of Oregon summed up the questions of many skeptical – and honest – legislators when she asked, “Why the haste? Why the rush? The answer, it seems to me, is to give legislative protection to private profiteering from this communications system before the Americans wake up to what is being done.”
Have you heard enough to cause you to wake up to what is being done? Enough to wonder why some Congressmen who talk about “fiscal responsibility” and vote against anything that will benefit the aged or the poor, do not seem to realize they are giving away your tax money – and your future – to their friends in giant corporations such as A.T. & T.?
Have you heard enough to want to hear this issue debated by the Congressional candidates on TV? Would you write your favorite television and ask them to arrange it?