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. [well, almost all. I have found that his views on homosexuality were those common to his time. Would he have been able to change again? Maybe...]
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.
November 21, 1963
THE CUBANS TRIED IT
We have read with interest and gratitude a study by C.F. Marley of Nokomis, a farmer and farm writer, which throws light on how the unhappy island of Cuba fell to the Communists.
If we would prevent a similar tragedy here or elsewhere, we would do well to look behind the headlines to see why it happened in Cuba.
Marley, a man of some discernment who does not totally agree with any standard point of view in the present civil war on the farm, concludes that the fall of Cuba owed much to its one-crop economy. In a book published in 1934, “The Pageant of Cuba”, by Hudson Strode, the story of Cuba's decay was spelled out in terms that should have been understood long ago.
The Cuban Sugar Boom early in this century brought a heedless rush from diversity into specialization. Plantations of coconut palms were burned dow, as well as great forests of some of the finest cabinet woods on earth. Livestock was butchered, and every acre went to sugar cane; suddenly the world market discovered there was too much sugar. In 1921, the world price of sugar dropped from 22 1/2¢ down to 3 5/8¢ per pound.
The Cuban peasants had sold out their small holdings to the sugar companies, and became peons on the company payroll. Now “the company” became not only wealthy and ruthless, but foreign-owned as well. The Cuban banks went broke in the crash, and when Cuba woke up from the nightmare, they weren't really sure it was over. American investors had bought up three-quarters of the Cuban sugar industry at bargain prices. “During the next decade”, we quote from Mr. Strode's book, which is in many libraries, “the railways, the public utilities, the tobacco industry, and the mines came under the control of American corporations.”
Small wonder that the governments which followed on the Cuban island were thought of as puppets in the hands of American Big Money. Small wonder that the peons were hungry and restless. Small wonder they would follow anyone who promised them bread, dignity, and Cuban ownership of Cuba.
Clem Marley find the story of Cuba's past a wonderful example of vertical integration carried to its logical conclusion, and asks whether the “Agribusiness Boys” know the end result when they tell us to specialize, like the Cuban peasant who sold his pigs, his chickens, his cow and then his land in order to become a one-crop specialist working for “the company”?
March 5, 1964
LET HIM SPEAK!
On March 18th a cluster of sick little minds will converge on Decatur to the “Community Lecture Series” sponsored by the John Birch Society to hear Professor Revilo P. Oliver call John Fitzgerald Kennedy a traitor and a Communist.
Why will they be there? We have no explanation; all we can offer is a parallel. We have sometimes seen overfed, pampered dogs astonish their owners by lying down and rolling in the foulest corruption and filth they could find.
Readers have already inquired why we, who loved JFK and admired his policies, have thus far been silent on the Oliver controversy. It would be so easy to answer extremism with extremism; to call down the wrath upon this sick man and dignify his ravings by counter-charges.
It is our studied opinion that his statements, in a recent article in the Birchist magazine “American Opinion”, constitute a criminal libel. This cannot, however, be proven outside a court, and it may be that no-one considers Oliver of sufficient account to institute legal action against him.
The controversy does not involve the substance of his charges. We have met no-one in full possession of his faculties who will admit to believing them. The great debate rages over this man's fitness to draw tax money as wages and to teach young people in a great state university.
We wish you knew Roger Ebert. This young man, editor of the DAILY ILLNI student newspaper at the U. of I., has proved to be a rock in this sea of controversy, while President David D. Henry of the University has demonstrated that he is but a sandbar shifting to and fro with the tides of popular passion.
Henry first declared he had no comment, then condemned the article as an individual but refused to take any official action; and finally took official action by turning the Oliver case over to the committee on academic freedom and tenure.
Ebert is a young liberal, a champion of causes and opinions that frequently differ with accepted views and are often excluded from campuses as “radical” or “controversial”. How did Roger Ebert, and a host of students like him, respond to Oliver's outrageous statements... with vengeful bitterness? No, it was Ebert's cool judgement that although “There is no point in which I agree with Professor Oliver's remarks... However, a free, democratic society such as ours has nothing to fear from the expression of any opinion.”
Another Roger, Roger Pogue of Decatur, is head of the Alumni Association, and he had not only a right but a responsibility to speak up as he did, condemning Prof. Oliver's statements. He suggested the Professor resign, and there is something to be said for the argument that, though Oliver is an excellent instructor in the classics, a man in his position does bear a relationship to the University even in his off-campus activities. Is a man who cannot differentiate fact from fancy really qualified to teach?
Young Roger feels, however, that all this misses the point of academic freedom. It is, after all, the mistaken and unpopular speaker who must be defended if freedom of speech is to mean anything at all. Dean Jack W. Peltason of the University, whom no-one would accuse of agreeing with the Birchers, stated that he found the article “in bad taste and offensive”, yet “He has the same rights as every other American citizen to express his political views outside the classroom.”
Lacking a suit for criminal libel, therefore, the case rests with the university committee where President Henry very properly consigned it after a period of vacillation. Now the embarrassing question of Professor Leo Koch comes once more to the fore. Koch, in 1960, was dismissed for publicly stating views on sex which were a lot closer to what most people actually do , than to what most people will admit they do. Prof. Koch was sacked immediately, with a great show of righteous wrath about his statements being “prejudicial to the best interests of the University.”
The criticism of Koch was that his views tended to encourage students to rush out and make love to the girls... the only measurable reaction from the distortions and hate-peddling of Oliver and Welch and General Walker is that one unbalanced young man in search of someone to hate, squeezed the trigger of the rifle they had already aimed for him.
Possibly the most offensive act of the entire lecture series is the smug statement by Dr. Dale Scholtz, Robert Rowe, and the other John Birch Society advocates who sponsored it, that Robert Kennedy has been invited to speak to another session of the lecture series in order to answer Prof. Oliver's charges! Words fail to express the insult and outrage which loyal and decent Americans feel to hear the brother of our late President asked to answer charges John Kennedy was a Communist and a traitor... charges delivered by a man who probably did as much as any living human being to set the fires of hatred that spread into Lee Oswald's disordered brain.
We earnestly hope that no one of our readers will undertake any disrespect toward the person of Prof. Oliver. He is very, very, mistaken, but he has the right to speak. Just remember that his title is “Marxmanship in Dallas”, and that, like other hate-peddlers from Texas, he is determined to pin the blame somewhere else in order to salve what is probably a guilty conscience of historic proportions.