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Show J - r. t Page Four FRIDAY, JANUARY 16, 1959 ' THE SALT LAKE TIMES Sen. Johnson Guides Demos In Wise Use of Probe Powers With hog prices high for the past couple of years, farmers raised 17 per cent more pigs last fall for market next spring and the USDA estimates the spring pig crop will jump by 13 per cent over a year ago. "Dogs may be a man's best friend, but any farm belt con-gressman will tell you that hogs are more important, politically. There are something like two million hog raisers and when prices go down farmers become very displeased. 'The man they usually pin the blame on is the Secretary of Ag-riculture. Benson has been warn-nin- g growers for two years to hold down their hog production but that won't keep him from being blamed when prices drop. "And if the forecasters are cor- - Democrats in Congress who seemed to have settled the civil rights issue without splitting the party are relying on the his-toric device of inquiry to pro-vide their real power. They can challenge the White House leadership across a broad front but constitutional limita-tions will remain a handicap. According to Courtney Shel-don, staff correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor in Washington, Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, as powerful as he is, does not intend to step outside the confines of the established system to push inquiries. "He talks about the Democrats 'mandate for confident and cre-ative and constructive leader-ship beginning now, not two years from now.' rect, other farm prices will be going down during the year. Even USDA economists who know that pessimistic predic-tions displease their boss, are forecasting a 5 to 10 per cent decline in 1959 farm prices. "Farmers squeezed between falling prices of the things they sell and rising prices of things they buy are in the habit of tell-ing their troubles to their con-gressmen. It is up to the con-gressmen to place the blame. "While farm prices are going down food prices almost certain-ly will be going up. In the past 10 years farm prices have gone down 23 per cent while food prices have increased by 27 per cent. Neither farmers nor con-sumers are happy about that. "Either way Benson can't win. Farmers blame him for the low prices they receive, and consum-ers kick be cause of higher food prices. Taxpayers object to the high cost of farm subsidies. One thing Benson can count on: Hogs and Democrats will make life uncomfortable for him in 1959." "But he is carefully telling his colleagues (and the country) that 'we do not have authority to command. We have powers to advise and consent. We do not have powers to implement and accomplish." On other fronts things were looking rather dismal for Sec-o- f Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson. Columnist Clinton Davidson noted that: "With the new Congress only a week old it is already apparent that Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson has as many troubles as anyone in Washing-ton. "He starts out with a predomi-nantly Democratic Congress that is sure to oppose his farm plans and in general make 1959 any-thing but a happy year for him. "Pigs and politics will be the principal cause of his woes. There will be too much of both. And, as if that were not enough, he'll have too much wheat, corn, cotton, tobacco and a few other surpluses. "During the past year Benson paid farmers almost a billion and a half dollars for farming prac-tices principally designed to hold down production. Farmers, in-stead, produced bumper crops 11 per cent larger than the previous record on the smallest acreage in 80 years. . : "Benson believes that the costs of government farm programs are too high and that Congress should take steps to reduce them. But, he concedes, he hasn't much chance of reducing costs until the farm laws are changed. "Farm programs, which in-clude such things as subsidized exports, the school lunch pro-gram, etc., last year cost $6 bil-lion. Unofficial estimates are that these programs may cost as, much as $7 billion this year. "With the exception of the De-fense Department the Agricul-ture Department spends more money than any other govern-ment agency. Despite these ex-penditures government holdings of farm surpluses have reached $7 billion and may go to $8 bil-lion within the next few weeks. Storage charges alone amount to more than $1 million a day. "The worst may be yet to come. , THE SALT LAKE TIMES Combined with The Salt Lake Mining & Legal Newt fcarl6SS Published Every Friday at Salt Lake City, Utah , Entered at the postoffke at Salt Lake Qty as second Independent class matter August 23, 1923 under the act of March 8, Newspaper ?11 South West TempIe Telephone EM GLENN BJORNN, Publisher Subscription Price $3.00 per year in advance "This publication is not owned or controlled by any party, clan, clique, faction or corporation." Vol ume 38 Number 34 Republican Abuse of Public Trust (Continued from Page 1) keep running the county. And they hight start asking themselves what they can do to correct the situation. Are we going to stand calmly by and watch the people's mandate ignored? It's time that the residents of Salt Lake County stand up and roar a mighty protest at this latest and most flagrant exhibition of abuse of public trust. . Conquest and Containment A 75 per cent, increase in cases of measles in 1958, as re-ported by the National Office of Vital Statistics, once more points up the fact that when we speak of having "conquered" many of the age-ol- d epidemic diseases, we might more accu-rately say we have "contained" them, according to a reminder from the Health News Institute. The menace is still with us, says HNI. The fact that we no longer have tragic outbreaks ,with high infant and child mortality figures, is due to the vigilance with which we exert public health measures, the wide use of vaccines, and the miracle drugs which have come into spectacular supply in the last dozen years. The real miracle, perhaps, is that epidemics don't recur " '"' more frequently. For example, only 220 deaths were attributed to infantile paralysis in 1957. Yet 40,000,000 Americans within the recommended age group still haven't had their polio shots. Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical manufacturers who undertook the crash production program which brought polio vaccine into abundant supply are watching the life-savin- g vaccine deteriorate on their shelves. Why not be safe instead of sorry? the-LE- ASED GRAPEVINE W. Lamar Webb this week was named president of Zions First National Bank. He succeeds Or-v- al Adams, who retired Monday after 36 years as the bank's chief executive. J. Eastman Hatch was named a member of the bank's board of directors. The University of Utah has acquired without cost an addi-tional 35 acre site at Fort Doug-las. The land will be used as a site of married students' housing facilities costing more than three million dollars. The university board of regents accepted deed to the land this week. Three veteran members of the Salt Lake City police depart-ment who recently retired, will be honored Friday at 2 p.m. at an open house at the police gym-nasium in the Public - Safety Building. They are Gussie A. Friend, Albert H. Rogers and P. Clyde Smith. " ' Plans to start a junior college in the Salt Lake area have been announced by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints. Negotiations are under way, the church said, to obatin a suitable site. No information was given as to the site. ...'. Salt Lake City's fourth grade pupils meet the national norm in spelling ability but. exceed it in reading, language and arith-metic, the Salt Lake City Board of Education reported this week. The information . was ' obtained from tests administered to stu-dents in the fourth, seventh and tenth grades. Seventh grade pu-pils top the national norm in all four categories, the tests showed while 10th grade stu-dents far axceed the norm in nine fields. T. Quentin Cannon, a Salt Lake attorney and six year vet-eran on the Salt Lake City Board of Education, this week became president of the board succeeding Virgil H. Smith. Waldo M. Smith replaced Mr. Cannon as vice president of the board. Arrests for fish and game law vciolations last year shaw an in- - . crease over 1957, according to figures released by the depart-ment of fish and game. Total amount of fines imposed, however, as well as the average fine for each case processed by the courts, show a decrease over the previous year. Court costs of $4,918 deducted from the total fines collected by the courts leaves a net of $21,467 returned to the state for deposit in the fish and game fund during 1958. Average charge of the court per case processed was $2.92. The report further shows that arrests were made for violations of 56 different sections of the fish and game code. . Scientific research is a Bell System tradition that dates back to the earliest days of the tele-phone. Today, more than 100,000 scientists, engineers, technicians and their associates carry on this tradition of research and devel-opment at their laboratories. Their work benefits both the nation and world as well as the telephone system. Brusatto Notes Apology in Clyde Speech Representative James Brusatto (D-Sa- lt Lake County), today stated that he detected a note of apology in the "State of the State" message delivered Tues-day by Utah Governor George D. Clyde before a joint session of the Utah State Senate and the Utah State House of Representa-tives. Rep. Brusatto, whose brother, Rev. Frank Brusatto, pastor of St. Annes Parish and director of Catholic Charities served as Chaplain for the day's session of the House, had this to say: "It appeared to have an apolo-getic overtone. I found it diffi-cult to detect whether he was apologizing for his administra-tion or the one preceding, which-ever it was, it was still more of an apology than a vision of things to come." A Move For Safer Flying Any businessman or farmer flying his own airplane, and looking for a place to land at night, might not think of the tall corn state of Iowa as a particularly, good nomination but he's wrong. - ' . For Iowa, like Utah, although it has few large cities and big airports, has embarked on a plan to help increasing numbers of flying farmers and business executives by helping small town airports buy and operate all night runway lights. Although it may not appear as front page news, Frank ' Berlin, director of the Iowa Aeronautics Commission, thinks it's a progressive step that other states such as Utah soon may fol-low to cut down dangers to small planes flying long stretches between commercial airports at night. "Pilots fly at night with confidence because they know they are within minutes of a lighted runway," says Berlin. One reason is that the state has agreed to pay half of the equipment cost for municipal airports, in satisfactory locations, who will buy and install a runway light kit, and agree to operate the lights from sunset to sunrise. The equipmen, called the "flying fatmer kit," is purchased from one of the leading makers of big city airport lighting. The firm, whose high intensity lights guide four-engin- e air-liners into Chicago Midway, New Yorg, LaGuardia and Idle-wil- d, Boston, Indianapolis, and dozens of other large airports, several years ago made available to farmers the low priced kit with which private or small town runways can be lighted for ' $750 runways 2200 feet long, as an example, can be lighted for $750 compared with $5,000 to $10,000 for other systems. Then the lights, which even Arthur Godfrey has bought for the air strip on his farm, can be operated on current of approximately that 'required for an electric iron on a regular household circuit. In Iowa' 60 airports now have permanent runway lights, and 15 more are eligible to receive help under the state-wid-e small airport lighting aid plan which went into effect in 1955. On example of how popular the lights have become is at Marshalltown airport where no night landings were made before the do-it-yours- lighting was installed. In the next few months, 74 landings were made after dark, including one emergency set-dow- n. The flying farmer kit also has been ordered by some mis-sionary bush pilot organizations. The firm also reports that, as an index of the value of runway light abroad as well as in this country, when Chinese Nationalist armies retired from the main-land to Formosa, they ripped up and carried away lights from Shanghai's airport and two others, because they figured the Com-munists would have a hard time replacing them. . |
