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.
February 18, 1965
YOUR CHIILDREN'S PENNIES
On a few occasions, we have been very fortunate in our timing.
On January 14 of this year, this newspaper printed an editorial entitled, “In Poor Taste”. We had been offended by what appeared to us to be the improper tone of charity appeals by the March of Dimes national office, and we also questioned their adoption of other causes such as birth defects after their long campaign against polio had contributed toward ending that menace.
Along with our charge of “cheap sensationalism”, we called on the organization for information concerning the manner in which it used the money collected from generous citizens.
On February 4 we published in full on this page, a letter from Mr. William R. Tegeler, Field Representative of the National Foundation: March of Dimes office in Springfield. He set out with what he intended to be a scathing rebuttal of our charges. Unfortunately, he included the wild claim that “Our national average of full administrative costs for each year is less than five percent.”
We took the financial report which he included with his letter, and quickly demonstrated that the costs of running the campaign and of managing the money after it is collected (all of which should properly have been called “administration”,”) amounted, not to 5%, but to a minimum of 31% and a probable 40% by their figures.
This we revealed in an editorial in the same newspaper. Then, on February 11, the New York Times printed a story which cast much light on this situation. It was sent us by a good friend who reads the Times each morning and considers it the country's finest newspaper.
The Times broke the story that the president of the National Foundation, Mr. Basil O'Connor, has for the past six years been paying himself quite a large salary, plus expenses, out of March of Dimes money – without ever having announced this fact to the unpaid volunteers who perform all the loving labor of neighborhood collections.
The Times attempted to talk with the 28 individuals who are listed as trustees of the National Foundation. Only 15 could be reached, and of these, only 3 knew that O'Connor was receiving a salary. Bernard A. Ehrenreich, for instance, as director in St. Louis, stated, “I am positive he is unpaid.” A significant number of the trustees, all prominent persons, admitted they were inactive in the affairs of the March of Dimes and would not know what the facts were. One, Mr. Horace W. Brower of California, said, “I sent him a letter of resignation a couple of years ago, but he hasn't accepted it.”
When approached by the New York Times, O'Connor admitted he is now receiving a salary “plus expenses”. What that salary is, he refused to say, “except to legally constituted authorities to whom we have to say.” They pressed the question whether he is receiving $50,000 a year. “I'm a little disappointed”, he replied, and mentioned other reports which claimed he was receiving $100,000.
Basil O'Connor was a former law partner of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Without doubt he has done much to combat polio since he became head of the March of Dimes in 1938. But he has done it with your money, and there must be limits to the gratitude the public owes such a man.
With what amounts to a dummy board of trustees, the National Foundation” March of Dimes can now be seen to have poured seven hundred and eleven million dollars since 1938 more or less into the hands of one man. If he is responsible to anyone, the Times was unable to discover who that might be. It must be assumed that the treasurer of the organization is either Mr. O'Connor himself or one of his dummies. We make no charge, but we do feel this is a greater strain on one man's character than we have a right to impose on it. Those who know him describe O'Connor as “hard-boiled” and “dictatorial”. Is he also dishonest? He missed an opportunity to prove he was honest when he failed to report to his own workers or to the public that he has for six years been drawing a salary of undisclosed amount.
We respectfully suggest the time has come for a federal court to take such steps as they feel suitable in order to inform themselves and the public concerning the actual state of March of Dimes financial affairs, concerning Mr. O'Connor's personal finances, and concerning the relationship between the two.
To all the fine and trusting people who have worked for the March of Dimes and contributed to it, we express profound regret that it has fallen to us to expose a very unfortunate situation, which may indeed bring to an end the local participation with the March of Dimes in many communities.
May we also assure them that we bear no ill-will toward their favorite charitable cause, but only against charity racketeers in general; and we repeat our request to the officials of other charitable drives of whatever nature that they send to us at once a copy of their own financial report in order that we may give them the benefit of the same searching analysis. Perhaps they will look good by comparison. If we do not soon receive these financial reports from the Heart Fund and the Cancer Fund and others, we will find it necessary to write their offices to request this information.
Americans are a trusting people. Particularly when their finest emotions are aroused, may they fail to look behind the appeal and to check on the people who will be handling the money. It is hard to believe that we would give $711,000,000 to a group of people over whom there is no mechanism for public control, no requirement for full disclosure of salaries and expenses, and no procedure for removing a dishonest official from office.
With these glaring faults in the structure of all charity drives, is it possible that several of them exist chiefly for the benefit of a handful of hard-eyed professional fund-raisers from New York City? Are great fortunes being founded on the pennies your children give at school to aid the unfortunate victims of disease?
We favor the concentration of charitable appeals into one United Fund, and the most careful policing and full disclosure of the operations of that Fund, together with built-in procedures for removing leaders who have not performed their duties in the public interest.