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Show Our Names Can Be There Too (Dr. Carlton Culmsee, U S A C) Just two centuries ago Printer Ben Franklin wanted some jealous colonies to team up to save their scalps and chop a future out of the forests. Since then the cooperation idea has blossomed until it is world-wide. Cooperation is only one of the instruments and tools that make the human race stronger than it used to be Atomic energy is another, which will make cooperation a thousand times as effective as before. Ezra Taft Benson said recently that it may touch off agriculture's "most revolutionary rev-olutionary development of all time," through mutations adn other livestock breeding advances, increase and speedup speed-up of crop yields, improved marketing and preservation. America's greatest cooperative the Land-grant Colleges in partnership with the farmer can make such dreams realities through research and extension. So with the New Year throwing a challenge at us, we can't help but ask ourselves, "Are we making the most out of our advantages? Are we making as much of them as the pioneers would have done?" Not so long ago the noted architect and planner Neut-tra Neut-tra praised the creative vigor, the spiritual force of our forefathers. But he thinks we seem inclined to recline on their laurels. He may be about 51 per cent right. There's a definite g feeling that those pioneers were some sort of supermen, isjor that they had virgin opportunities that handed them a .long head start. In either case we often find a comforting excuse for not doing as much as they did although wc have a thousand times as much "muscle" to do it with, in a mechanical sense at least. Have we got soft or slur- gish, or is there the "spiritual vacuum" that Toynbee said was our modern disease? To hear some people talk, you'd think we are all tired old folks in a tired old land. g Actually we are still in the pioneer period. In many ways we have just scratched the surface. The swift rise of the steel and manufacturing industries and the uran- ium boom are portents of things to come. Many folks gaze fondly back at the 47'ers and envy x their lustrous names. But if we can bestir ourselves rouse our creative energies we ought to outdo them a dozen ways, because we have far better tools in our hands. There's not a doubt in the world of this: The Western- er of 2000 A. D. will look back on us as pioneers. That is, he will if we handle ourselves right. In the year 2000, some tall proud peaks will loom out of the mallow haze that will lie on this epoch. They will be the men who had the vision and the get-up-and-get to do something for them- selves and their neighbors with the tools science has put in their hands. 1 "I felt so good this morning," an old-timer wrote in his journal, "I felt like I could kick the mountains around like footballs." He just felt that way. But we are getting ourselves g into a position so that we actually can move mountains if we can have the spirit he had. Pres. Eisenhower has urged a spiritual rebirth. Why 2 don't we start righ now to make sure that ours are the names inscribed in letters of gold on the roll of the real n builders? Utah and Humanity will be all the better for 5 our efforts. |