A Great Victory
A Great Victory The news that Vermont had elected its first Democratic Representative to Congress in more than a century made headlines the day after the election, but most newspapers failed to...
...For example, some 6,000 Indian youngsters, wards of the federal government, are unable to attend school because the Indian Bureau does not have adequate funds for classroom construction...
...In fact, it is even bigger than a lot of wartime budgets...
...Form a welcoming committee to make certain that neighbors visit the new family and help them understand that they have friends...
...The electorate showed on November 4 this year that it wants a progressive party to enact a progressive program...
...Sunday voting might produce a similar result, but somehow it would be reassuring to know the choice at the polls was made by a more substantial proportion of eligible voters than at present...
...Studies show that if the physical character of the housing and grounds is maintained, and if city services maintain good neighborhood standards, property values will remain stable no matter who moves in...
...It is difficult to understand the Administration's smug complacency in view of the fact that the Soviet offer has had what the New York Times reported as "an immediate and powerful propaganda effect all through the Middle East...
...The terms of the Soviet loan are shrewdly moderate, as all Soviet loans are—an interest rate of 2.5 per cent, with repayment not to begin until the first phase of the irrigation and power project is completed and then to be spread over 12 years...
...Two years and three months after the West withdrew its offer to finance the Aswan Dam project, Cairo has again been obliged to stretch out its hand to Moscow, which took it with little hesitation...
...The sputnik scare and efforts to stem the recession stimulated the last Congress to appropriate $76 billion for the regular budget for the current year, plus $5 billion in supplemental appropriations—$13 billion more than in 1957...
...But our Secretary of State saw nothing to "get terribly excited about...
...Not For Sale' The arrival of a colored family in a previously all-white neighborhood need not affect property values, according to Algernon D. Black in a new 25-cent pamphlet, Who's My Neighbor, published by the Public Affairs Committee, 22 East 38th Street, New York City...
...Secretary of State John Foster Dulles promptly pooh-poohed its significance...
...My physicians are hopeful of my recovery because I have had a cell-type of cancer which is susceptible to radiation...
...Black suggests that, in the event a colored family moves into his neighborhood, a home owner "call together his friends and those he has reason to believe are democratic and courageous people...
...They don't scare me...
...Steps leading toward the admission of Communist China to the United Nations...
...Nor did I ever think in personal terms when I participated in welcoming members of the Cured Cancer Congress to the Senate gallery last summer...
...and by saying it to everyone who would listen...
...If every last non-military item of the current peacetime budgets were eliminated, even including the salaries of the President and members of the Congress, expenditures would still exceed by more than 20 per cent the largest of former President Harry S. Truman's Korean war budgets...
...Harry Truman proved in 1948 that militant liberalism can win for the Democrats without the Solid South...
...Southern liberals went along with their racist colleagues, we thought, because they felt they had to for political reasons, but their hearts weren't in it...
...Representative of the forthright position expressed by Meyer—to the horror of professional politicians—was this statement which appeared in his campaign folder: "I propose that we take a calculated risk and announce that we will stop testing and manufacturing atomic and hydrogen bombs so that we can lead all nations to accept disarmament on a greater scale...
...If this is the way the Communists operate, then I am in favor of the friendliest relations with Communist countries...
...Neuberger and Cancer During his first four years in the U.S...
...Together they might decide on the following steps: "1...
...Advocates of Sunday voting cite the relative ease of voting on a day normally spent at home or in leisure pursuits—proximity to the polls, the availability of baby-sitters, combining of voting with church-going, and the lack of conflict with business activities...
...Finally, we should realize that others fear us just as we may fear them...
...We must work for the creation of an international system for inspection and control but that is not enough...
...Property values will either go down, stay stable, or go up depending on the other forces at work in the neighborhood," Mr...
...The Progressive sheds a great deal of light that is not to be found in the newspapers...
...What puzzles us," the Journal continued, "is that the President seems somewhat puzzled that people cannot clearly differentiate 'radical' spending and 'conservative' spending...
...The Russians have not proved the superiority of their system, but they are forging steadily ahead in their peaceful war of trade and production...
...Of course," he adds, "if homeowners believe that the arrival of a colored family will bring a deterioration in property values, and if they panic and put up 'For Sale' signs, their actions will glut the market and drive property values down . . . But it is clear that what affects values is not the entrance of the non-white family but the panic selling by the previous residents...
...The Soviets, he said, "are relentless in this...
...They may even put 'Not for Sale' signs in their windows...
...This is more than the West ever did for us...
...Senator John Sparkman has now riddled this wistful notion of ours...
...He won against great odds...
...In accordance with President Eisenhower's request that non-military spending be "restrained," many budget items not subject to cold war and recession pressures have been cut...
...In countries where elections are held on Sundays, rather than on any week day, a much greater percentage of the people vote...
...Meyer was not known at all, even in the ranks of his own Democratic Party...
...the biggest Truman budget of the Korean war was less than $80 billion...
...When the Soviet loan was announced...
...The Soviets March On A year or so ago Nikita Khrushchev, boss man of the Soviet Union, declared war on the United States—"in the peaceful field of trade and production...
...Therefore, we must remove the spots that sometimes blind us to the need for changes and compromises where they are honorable and just...
...Reports from the Middle East make it clear that Soviet stock has soared markedly since the Kremlin announcement...
...Yet when I spoke of 40 million Americans having cancer, I never thought I might be in this category...
...Black points out...
...I admire greatly what you have done, and have been influenced by your thinking," he told us after the election...
...This is a relatively recent medical discovery...
...The United States has refused to help finance the project although it represents precisely the kind of development program the Administration sometimes says it would like to see encouraged in the Middle East...
...A Hope Riddled We have long nursed the secret hope that Southern Senators who have liberal records on social and economic legislation might one day break away from the racist dem-agoguery practiced by the Eastland-Talmadge school of reaction...
...But there may be a simple answer to the question of why at least a large part of half the voters don't vote...
...When will our standard of values change to something more sane and rational...
...How many other Americans may find their lives equally reliant on some new discovery, attained through widespread federal encouragement of medical research...
...How many Americans have died ahead of their time, because they became ill with certain diseases before profound discoveries had been made leading to the cure or control of such diseases...
...When women's suffrage was being debated almost two generations ago, Albert Jay Nock, a cynic's cynic, observed that his indifference to the issue was based on his conclusion that the number of votes for each candidate would be doubled, but that the outcome of the election would not be changed...
...In a letter to The Progressive for which he has written frequently during the past 15 years, the Senator wrote: "All during my Senate career I have been interested in advancing the cause of medical research, especially in the field of cancer...
...Whether the increase would alter the complexion of an election is less evident...
...We must do our best to promote justice and understanding and help others to achieve a better life...
...Two of the favorite whipping boys of the "conservative" spenders, foreign aid and the United Nations, received two per cent and one-tenth of one per cent, respectively, of this year's appropriations...
...Thinking Americans can only hope that the newly strengthened liberal ranks in Congress will call him to account when the session opens and force major revisions in our foreign policy...
...The pattern of federal spending is not likely to change drastically whether "radicals" or "conservatives" control the Congress so long as such an enormous proportion of the taxpayers' money goes directly into armaments...
...How long can we Americans continue spending more on chewing gum than on cancer research, and dozens of times more on liquor and cigarettes than on all medical research and on all medical education...
...We are not always right and completely justified...
...Of this record-breaking peace time total, 73 per cent is to pay for past wars and national defense programs...
...Typical of the more restrained comment in the Middle East was the editorial in An Naher, a powerful, independent Lebanese daily by no means anti-Western, which asserted that "400,000,000 Western mistakes are going to build a new Pyramid...
...Work quickly to track down and answer all rumors and dispel any bigoted untruths or half-truths involving neighborhood affairs...
...More extended negotiations with the Soviet Union...
...A Great Victory The news that Vermont had elected its first Democratic Representative to Congress in more than a century made headlines the day after the election, but most newspapers failed to report the even more astonishing news that William H. Meyer, the victorious candidate, campaigned on a platform which included planks calling for: • Abolition of the peacetime draft...
...Radical vs...
...Now, $80 billion," commented the Wall Street Journal, "is more than any Administration, radical, conservative, New Deal or whatever, has ever required of the taxpayers in peacetime...
...A good many reasons are offered, especially by the cynics...
...Of the world's 65 democracies, the United States consistently draws the smallest percentage of its voters to the polls...
...Conservative Spending Just about the time President Eisenhower was making headlines with his alarm over the "radical" spenders he fears will dominate the greatly strengthened Democratic majority in Congress, a less publicized news item appeared, reporting that the Administration was preparing a budget for the next fiscal year that runs to $80 billion dollars...
...The evidence is persuasive that Sunday voting would almost certainly swell the proportion of people who would find their way to the polls...
...What a pitiful sight to see a Senator of Sparkman's stature nestling up to Talmadge and making so much of the fact that he had been praised by that Dixie demagogue...
...The New York Times, for example, quoted a representative Egyptian business man as saying: "I have been skeptical of Russian intentions, but this has convinced me that they are truly anxious to help us...
...Senate, Oregon's Richard L. Neuberger devoted a great deal of his time and prodigious energy to the quest for larger federal appropriations for medical research, especially for cancer...
...He won by the content of what he had to say of America...
...I imagine every person has similarly isolated himself from such a calamity...
...Certainly a failure in that direction would be more sensible than a failure in atomic destruction...
...I don't think it is anything to get terribly excited about," he said...
...Basic revision of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles' sterile foreign policy...
...Recently, in a newsletter he released from Washington, the Alabama Democrat proudly pointed to the fact that twice during the past year he and his colleague, Senator Lister Hill, have won the praise of Georgia's race-baiting Senator Herman Talmadge for opposing civil rights legislation...
...Only in that way can we gain the friendship and confidence that are vital to our survival...
...Here are some of the ingredients of a truly creative American foreign policy, but no politician representing one of the major parties has dared embrace them until Meyer courageously stepped forward in, of all places, ultra-conservative Vermont...
...Or clearly distinguish between the virtues of Republican spending and the vices of Democratic spending...
...Now, all at once, I have discovered that I myself am involved in these things...
...And then cancer struck Senator Neuberger...
...Sweden, France, and West Germany, where voting is optional, as it is here, record from 75 to 88 per cent in a national election, while in Italy and Austria, where voting is compulsory, the totals run up to 97 per cent...
...My prospects are vastly improved, so I am told, by the new high-voltage therapy made possible with cobalt...
...A greater emphasis on technical assistance and economic aid—and an accompanying reduction in military assistance—for our allies and the underdeveloped nations of the world...
...We will prove the superiority of our system...
...Giant Soviet strides toward victory in the war Khrushchev proclaimed last year do not impress him...
...His Republican opponent, former Governor Harold J. Arthur, was widely known...
...If Egypt is said to be the gift of the Nile, the Aswan Dam will be the gift of Moscow, and will be a powerful and probably final dam to Western influence, not only in the Arab world but in the whole of Asia and Africa, which, when they look to Egypt, see only the face of Russia on the banks of the Nile...
...Perhaps their most decisive stride forward came during the past month when the Kremlin announced a 400,-000,000 ruble loan to Egypt—$100,-000,000 on the basis of official exchange—to finance the first stage of the Aswan Dam, a tremendous project which will provide two million more acres of arable land for the United Arab Republic, make available a vast supply of hydro-electric power, and permit increased industrialization...
...Peace Is War Some clues to the problems of huge national budgets are found in an analysis of 1958 spending prepared by the Friends Committee on National Legislation...
...Sunday Voting In spite of the unusual interest in this year's political campaign, and even though a record number of voters cast ballots in a non-Presidential election, less than half of the eligible electorate in the United States expressed a choice at the polls...
...Other State Department officials observed that the Russians are "welcome to it...
...The Progressive is especially happy over Meyer's great victory because he is a long-time subscriber and warm supporter of this magazine...
...We must lead and we must help develop an international system of law and order that will police the troubled areas when the threat of war arises...
...Make it clear that he and others will not offer their property for sale, will not panic and leave the community...
...Agree not to fight against the moving of a colored family but see that it is done in such a way that a happy outcome is assured...
...The Aswan Dam will be the showpiece for all the economically underdeveloped countries to see...
...An end to the testing and manufacturing of atomic and hydrogen weapons...
Vol. 22 • December 1958 • No. 12
