THE MOOD OF AMERICA

...Currently the Foundation's only projects are KPFA and a similar station in Southern California, expected to go on the air in 1958...

...KPFA was conceived by a group of people who wished "to contribute to the growth of an enlightened and peaceful society...

...During the next two years the station operated at a deficit, in a constant, nerve-straining battle to keep going—hectic appeals to listeners for funds, missed salary checks, innumerable bills...

...Augusta County has demonstrated this in its unwillingness to be thrown into total confusion by the school segregation problem which has placed Virginia at the forefront of the resistance movement in the South...

...They make no banner headlines like violence in Birmingham, Alabama, or Clinton, Tennessee, but they are considerably more significant...

...In 1952 and 1956, both cities liked Eisenhower by landslide majorities...

...But KPFA is more than a venture in radio...

...Workers from crowded industrial areas and slums, some of whom might be organized in Communist-dominated unions, would be attracted who "would certainly not be the type of citizen who has kept this the fine 'Bible-belt' community that it is...

...To some extent this has resulted from the Eisenhower popularity...

...What has happened—and this is taking place in varying degree all over the South—is that the rural, agriculturally oriented, and small town pattern of life is being replaced by a more urban type of civilization...

...Several months after this letter was mailed, an editorial appeared in the Staunton News Leader dealing with the decision of Westinghouse and General Electric to open plants in the area...

...Fortunately, resulting unfavorable publicity was not disastrous, although subscriptions declined until Hill, who had left the station, returned in August...

...In recent years, however, the "traditional land of bygone days," as the tourist guide puts it, has succumbed to the lure of industry, and agriculture has moved into a secondary position...

...Many of the musical offerings are accompanied by commentaries...

...The Case for the South African Nationalist Government...

...In July, 1957, Hill committed suicide...

...Then the station hit newspaper headlines...

...The answer is not a simple one...

...What kind of reception would they and their families receive from local residents...

...Because of the scarcity of FM equipment, Pacifica started a Subscriber's Supply Service, selling FM sets and tuners at factory cost, giving a free KPFA subscription with each set...

...Already, more than half of the states affected by the May, 1954, Supreme Court school desegregation decision are engaged in some form of compliance...

...General Electric, representing an investment of $6 million and 1,000 employees, made Waynesboro the headquarters for its specialty control manufactures in 1954...

...Supreme Court's "sociological" decision, far more important sociological changes are taking place in the region...

...A substantial number of ASRC employees, he reported, were Jewish and Italian-Catholic and disturbed about the pending move...

...Augusta County has become the nearest thing to a melting pot Virginia has," says Louis Spilman, publisher of the Waynesboro News Virginian...

...Typical of the Old South at its best, Augusta County is rich in culture and reverence for the past...

...a speech and poetry reading by Pulitzer Prize winner Marianne Moore...

...interviews with two American students who had visited Red China, with a white member of the African National Congress on the racial situation in South Africa, with the U.N...

...The increasingly middle class character of Augusta County is also seen in the shift to Republicanism in recent years...

...In spite of the violent debate over civil rights issues, the outlook of the Southerner is growing more like that of the Northerner and Westerner...

...Traditionally, Waynesboro has been the back door to the aristocracy of its somewhat older neighbor, Staunton...

...Harry Ashmore, executive editor of the Arkansas Gazette and one of the South's leading interpreters of current social problems, put his finger on this in a recent speech when he said: "Legal segregation was only one of the three peculiar institutions that set the Southern region apart through most of its history...

...In two months KPFA's staff and subscribers had erased the station's financial deficit of $15,000 and had $15,000 more for current operating expenses...

...THE MOOD OF AMERICA Notes on Radio Broadcasting at fts Best And a Changing Pattern in the South KPFA: Radio At Its Best by GERRY MEISTER The search for meaningful communication may lead an inquiring mind practically anywhere, to the lecture hall, the concert auditorium, the art gallery—or even to the radio, at least in Northern California, where FM station KPFA, 1958 Peabody Award winner for the nation's best local public service programs, provides daily fare rivaling that of the traditional media of intellectual stimulation...

...commissioner for refugees on refugee camps...

...There are also advanced subscriber categories of $25, $50, and $100 for those who wish to contribute more to the station...

...But this didn't end KPFA's money problems...

...However, custom dies hard in this area...

...The non-financial advantages of KPFA's unique operation are readily apparent...

...Also, as a non-profit educational institution, the station is granted tax exemption...

...Buying income of the average family in Staunton and Waynesboro was $5,850 last year, and residents spent some $11 million on food alone...

...It is, in the words of a former Pacifica Foundation president, an "audacious and challenging adventure of the mind and of the heart...

...An established Staunton merchant complains of the engineers and their wives shopping together in shorts on Saturday in the supermarket "examining canned goods with a slide rule...

...Any side of an issue, the station insists, "can be presented openly and honestly by anyone qualified and willing to express his own thoughts...

...The growth of industry has brought prosperity to the area...

...The significance of this is that the conditions in which the older society existed are gradually being whittled away...

...There are no commercials, and few of the program participants receive money from the station...

...Some 5,820 Northern Californians subscribe and 400 of them in the higher subscription categories make up the $5 deficit per average subscriber...

...Despite this formidable list, KPFA is not all talk...

...KPFA presents one news program daily, a complete report with none of the sensationalized, misdirected brevity of the commercial station...

...Augusta County, Virginia, in which Staunton is located, is a good illustration of what is quietly taking place...

...Lew Hill's memorial was to be a fully-operative, self-supporting KPFA...

...Rather than falling apart at the loss of its guiding force, KPFA dedicated itself to realizing Lewis Hill's dream...

...The news is followed by a commentary, given by a different person each night...

...With other industries already there and Waynesboro only 12 miles away, Augusta County stands as eloquent tribute to Henry Grady's prediction of a New South...

...KPFA holds an important place in the lives of its listeners...

...Nature-cooled water brought E. I. duPont deNemours fe Co...

...Together, they represent an investment of $13 million and employ 2,700...

...The station is owned and operated by Pacifica Foundation, a non-profit corporation devoted to "exploring the bases of a peaceful society . . . and promoting the full distribution of public information...

...The station needs 8,000 subscribers to make KPFA entirely self-supporting and hopes to reach that goal by the end of 1958...

...The Griller Quartet, for instance, usually commands about $1,000 a performance...

...Were there any syhagdgties and Catholic churches in Staunton...

...The nine months ended with KPFA back on the air with a larger transmitter and a nine-hour broadcast day...

...This enabled KPFA to continue its development despite a nationwide lack of interest in FM broadcasting and a consequent lag in production of FM equipment...

...Situated in the broad, bright green Shenandoah Valley between the Blue Ridge and Allegheny Mountains, is the second largest county in the state...

...KPFA had broadcast a program which appeared to urge the legalization of marijuana usage...

...Pick up the telephone directory in Staunton and you will find Notre Dame football team type names like Urbanczyk, Usry, and Szczur...

...Located only a few miles from Monticello, it is steeped in the Jef-fersonian heritage of hostility to industry and urban living and belief in the virtues of an agrarian society...

...The contrast between Spilman's vigorous editorial page, which is unafraid of change, and the News Leader's symbolizes the clash between the Old and the New South...

...Waynesboro felt the impact first...

...a speech on the Algerian revolt by an Algerian Front of National Liberation spokesman...

...The station received a sizeable boost in 1951 when the Ford Foundation's Fund for Adult Education gave KPFA a three-year grant of $150,000...

...They believed this could best be done, not by formulating or conforming to any stated position, but by exploring, discussing, and searching for the information, the thought, and the attitudes of individual awareness "which alone make the democratic process tenable...

...For the station offers, as Kenneth Rexroth says, "a whole universe of discourse that just doesn't exist anywhere else in radio...

...Unlike the 150 or so educational stations in the United States, KPFA does not owe allegiance to institutional philanthropy or to legislative appropriations...

...The other two were the one-crop agrarian economy . . . and the one-party political system . . . All three of these institutions are so closely interrelated as to be virtually one, and none can survive the others...

...Partly because of the hi-fi craze, FM radio became popular once again, and KPFA recovered its losses by January, 1955...

...Two and a half years ago, Virginians went to the polls to vote, in effect, on whether the state constitution should be amended to permit the state to provide private school tuition grants to parents who didn't want their children to go to desegregated public schools...

...In 1925, the Crompton-Shenandoah Company which makes velveteen and corduroy was established...

...Nostalgia for the past and a way of life is being exploited by the Klan and citizens councils as well as by sincere and honest opponents of social change...

...and its Benger Laboratory four years later to manufacture acetate yarn and orlon...

...A year's subscription costs $10 and entitles the subscriber to the station's bi-weekly Folio, which lists the programs over a two-week period...

...KPFA sells not soap but integrity...

...KPFA's paid staff includes only nine full-time members and six who work half-time...

...Subscribing to KPFA does not mean buying stock in Pacifica foundation...

...The result is not the huge metropolis and probably never will be but neither is it the News Leader's "Bible-belt" community...

...As station directors note, "a free forum, even embracing at times some unpopular or at least minority viewpoints, is simply not possible unless ultimate control of program policy rests with the station itself...

...Programs presented in a recent month included: "Problems of Migratory Workers," "Health Hazards of Radiation," "Mental Retardation...

...In April, 1954, there were 3,400 KPFA subscribers...

...British Broadcasting Corporation productions of Julius Caesar and Macbeth...

...Food tastes are becoming more sophisticated...

...The Foundation was formed in 1946 "to explore the means by which communication might be freed from the influence of those who wish to impose a conformity of thought and taste upon our culture...

...But new racial patterns are developing in the South not only because of forces outside the region such as national and international opinion and the U.S...

...Its fertile soil has also made it one of the state's top ranking agricultural areas...

...Industry is the reason for the great change taking place in the region, and it is what industry brings that is making vast inroads on the area's ways —schools, books, magazines, radio, television, automobiles, travel, and new people from other parts of the country...

...it employed 3,100 last year...

...Products) in Brooklyn, New York, wrote to a friend in Richmond to ask for information about Staunton, Virginia, where the plant was transferring its operations...

...Since its beginning the station has been plagued with financial difficulties...

...Music takes up about 60 per cent of the nation's broadcast day...

...KPFA has found that non-commercial operation is far cheaper than commercial programming...

...Hill and Foundation members thought they would have to wait several years before funds could be raised to begin operation again, but the interest of subscribers in KPFA brought them together and sent them on nine months of fund-raising efforts—door-to-door calls, speeches, and the like...

...Supreme Court but the revolutionary changes taking place within it...

...It has appeared on KPFA for the union minimum of $32...

...the rest are volunteers...

...readings by San Francisco poets of their own works...

...Changing Pattern In the South by MURRAY FRIEDMAN In the summer of 1954, an employee of the American Safety Razor Company (now A.S.R...

...Augusta County and Staunton, however, approved the plan by a margin well below the state average, and Waynesboro actually voted it down by almost a two-to-one majority...

...While some people looked upon this as progress, the editorial pointed out, farming would lose its place as the primary industry...

...Major industry came to the Staunton area with sudden impact in 1954 when Westinghouse Electric Corporation (air conditioners) and American Safety Razor Products (Personna, Gem, and Pal razors and blades) began operation...

...Listeners found themselves in the midst of a massive subscription and fund-raising drive, with contributions going to the Lew Hill Memorial Fund...

...Musicians playing over KPFA are engaged at a special low rate established by the musicians' union as a concession to non-commercial status...

...Supported by its listeners through voluntary subscription, KPFA broadcasts from Berkeley 14 hours a day, covering the San Francisco Bay area and beyond with a wide variety of programs presenting issues "popular or unpopular, accepted or controversial...

...KPFA presents the full range of serious music—traditional and contemporary classics and jazz, ethnic and American folk, opera and chorale, and experimental electronic music...

...Some $5,370 of the station's monthly budget of $8,396 goes for salaries...

...KPFA was the dream of Lewis Hill, former Pacifica president...

...Nevertheless, in 1948, Staunton broke its traditional Democratic allegiance to vote for Dewey, and Waynesboro lacked only seven votes to join the bandwagon...

...Equally important, however, is the fact that the clarion calls to protect states rights and the Southern way of life fall on the less receptive ears of many people who come from parts of the country where either schools are mixed or these issues are not so transcending...

...While segregationists denounce the U.S...

...and a re-broadcast of the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in San Francisco...

...Thus the Southern leaders who are working with marked success to industrialize the region are undermining the system of segregation many of them so passionatetly defend...

...Not only is KPFA unique in radio in its basic philosophy, but it stands alone—and independent—in depending entirely on its audience for financial support...

...The News Leader was troubled by the dangers of over-industrialization...

...At present the deficit is made up from donations...

...Started as an experiment with a mere 100 subscribers and a six-hour broadcast day, the station was able to stay on the air with a transmitter reaching only the Berkeley area for 15 months before lack of funds silenced it...

...No employes are necessary for the handling of commercial accounts...

...From sparking the drive for better schools to purchasing hi-fi sets, the newcomers are making an impact on every phase of life...

...KPFA's annual budget is approximately $100,000...

...Augusta County's comparative freedom from racial tension may be the result of the small number of Negroes in the population—Staunton has 18 per cent and Waynesboro only nine per cent...

...This is not idle philosophy...

...In what is probably a more advanced rate than the rest of the region at the moment, Augusta County is demonstrating the breakdown of the Old South and all that that term connotes in the way of values, patterns of life, and firmly held ideas...

...California was suddenly up in aims...

...Today, Waynesboro claims 30 industries with a payroll of about $30 million and 7,000 employees and, according to Mayor W. C. Caldwell, "We're just starting...

...Staunton with 24,800 people and Waynesboro with 15,000 are its two major cities...

...Lewis Hill, with a unique gift for fund-raising, and despite illness which kept him in almost constant pain, kept pushing KPFA on...

...It carried in 25 of Virginia's 31 cities...

...The crucial question is how long will it take for these changes to be translated into new racial adjustments...

...The undercurrent of concern in the letter and editorial reflect certain changes that have been taking place in the South in recent years...

...The plan, which was looked upon by many as a threat to public education, was approved by better than a two-to-one margin...

...discussions of the problems of a county jail prisoner, of tire problems of drug addiction...

...New patterns of living and new attitudes are emerging from industrialization which will, in time, lead toward a solution of the South's vexing race problem...