NOTES IN THE NEWS
Richard L. Neuberger The sudden death of Senator Richard L. Neuberger has deprived the nation of one of its most thoughtful political figures and The Progressive of one of its most valued...
...That's it," chortled U.S...
...Westinghouse has ruled that claims for its products must reflect average rather than maximum or exaggerated performance...
...with air bases has frequently led to strained relations with the very countries in which these bases are located...
...During the first month only 100 Koreans registered to go to North Korea...
...The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot praised their action as "a bright spot in an otherwise dark and almost incredibly stupid chapter of Virginia government...
...Thirteen thousand children in three heavily populated counties were locked out of their schools, closed under the state's massive resistance laws...
...This is the attitude of only a minority of advertising men at the moment, but if the history of the past holds any lessons for the future, the spirit of unleashed caveat emptor could easily recapture Madison Avenue...
...Warburg wrote, "especially as it comes at a time when we are supposedly anxious to reach an agreement banning nuclear test explosions, not only to protect humanity against fallout but precisely in order to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by nations which do not already possess them...
...We believed in Dick Neuberger and what he was trying to do...
...It is quite conceivable, of course, that Truman and Acheson are right, that nothing can be expected from renewed negotiations with the Soviets...
...And how long the reform is likely to last or how deep it may penetrate might be measured by the comment of a Madison Avenue executive who said, bluntly, "We're changing nothing...
...It is quite possible that we are in for a season of truth and humor, but it will take continuing vigilance to keep the style from swinging back...
...In only one of the smaller counties in Virginia are school doors still closed, and even there official obstinance is gradually wilting...
...Dick Neuberger fought ably on important fronts during his five years in the Senate—and for many years before that as one of the nation's most competent and respected journalists...
...His extraordinary usefulness showed up in his persistent struggle for conservation, the development of power resources, the preservation of our scenic beauty, the reform of our election laws, and the expansion of public health programs...
...f Bulferin will soon drop the repulsive mechanistic digestive tract featured in its TV commercials...
...Non-Communist papers in Europe and Asia splashed the American report on their front pages and Britain's BBC beamed it around the world...
...intelligence was remarkably ill-informed...
...The air was charged with fear and anger...
...But things are happening there, and the situation is moderately brighter than it was when the state's schools made the front page daily...
...It is the first time in the history of the Twentieth Century," said Morocco's Crown Prince Moulay Hassan enthusiastically, "and particularly in the history of a Moslem, an Arab, and a newly independent state, that pending problems have been solved so satisfactorily...
...they are cocksure that the sessions at the summit will fail, and they are saying so every chance they get...
...But massive resistance to the point of closing schools was much more popular with politicians than with parents and teachers...
...There was scarcely a ripple of attention...
...Negro students have "shared freely in social affairs such as picnics, dinners, and dances...
...No more than 200 will ever accept the Red invitation...
...Now, the AFL-CIO has dug into the AMA's record on past legislation, and its findings may shed some light on the AMA's definition—if it has one—of socialism...
...He also outlined the AMA's opposition, most of which is the old familiar cry of "socialism...
...Another example of premature and costly scoffing concerns the Communist program to persuade Koreans living in Japan to go to Communist North Korea...
...Morris Llewellyn Cooke Death called last month on another great conservationist and advocate of public power development...
...No News Is Good News There aren't many news stories these days—and fewer bold headlines —about school integration in Virginia...
...How To Win Friends The frenetic drive of the United States to ring the U.S.S.R...
...A few days later there was a new burst of registrations as 5,000 more Koreans signed up to go to Red Korea...
...His talents were such that he could command handsome fees in the magazine market, but he responded cheerfully on every occasion on which we asked him to do an article for The Progressive, although we could pay but a pittance—and sometimes, when there was little, if anything, in the bank, nothing...
...Surely the President knows that once nuclear weapons come into the hands of a multitude of national governments, effectively controlled universal disarmament will become infinitely more difficult...
...It turned out that the Communists were controlling and budgeting registrations to fit their shipping and other facilities...
...So are the younger men of the Democratic Party's leadership...
...He served with distinction in many reform movements, pioneered in the development of public power, and played a distinguished role in the formulation of the TVA concept...
...What is happening," Warburg concluded, "is that we are being led, step by irreversible step, into a position in which the future of the United States and of all mankind will rest in the hands of an unpredictable number of foreign political or military leaders, any one of whom will be in a position to trigger an atomic holocaust...
...The President's proposal is equally disturbing on somewhat different grounds...
...More than a thousand Negro children are now in integrated schools, and the number slowly but steadily grows...
...Unhappily, much of the advertising industry seems to view truth in advertising much as it would view the changing styles in the length of women's skirts—up one year, down the next, the only concern being which sells best...
...Under the supervision of the International Red Cross, the government of Japan opened registration offices around the country...
...Harry Truman was quick to join up again with his former Secretary of State...
...In this depressing atmosphere, the decision by the United States to bow to the wishes of Morocco and abandon its air bases in that country comes as a welcome variation...
...But U.S...
...Not all advertisers, by any means, are changing their approach...
...f Only 3,000 or so Negro students —perhaps two per cent of the total student body—attend integrated colleges...
...If this heartening development actually materializes on any appreciable scale, two important factors will have been responsible...
...The second, and perhaps even more important factor, is the increasingly tough-minded drive of the Federal Trade Commission against misleading or fraudulent advertising...
...In the North, Too In New York City, only six months ago, the integration of five city schools brought on a roar of protest and a boycott by several hundred white parents and students...
...any nation which has a mutual defense treaty with the United States would, according to the President's words, be entitled to conclude, if it did not receive modern weapons including nuclear warheads, that the United States did not consider it a trustworthy ally...
...the Red Cross blood banks...
...Parents, too, through PTA's and other less organized efforts, made it clear that the political leadership had less than enthusiastic backing...
...There are already enough specific examples either on the screen or in preparation to warrant cautious optimism that advertisers might clean up the mess they have made of advertising, on television in particular but in other media as well...
...We shall miss him greatly...
...And only rarely has the United States handled the "Yankee, Go Home" reaction with sufficient care and tact to check the tide of bitterness...
...Well-informed Japanese are convinced there will be a constant regulated stream of repatriates to Communist Korea throughout the year...
...public venereal disease clinics...
...Ban, the deodorant, plans to eliminate "most of the references to odor" in its advertisements...
...It seems inconceivable that our authorities could be so poorly informed...
...Only last June, when the Administration filed with Congress a number of so-called nuclear-sharing agreements with certain of our allies, it asserted unequivocally that the nuclear warheads would at all times remain under United States control...
...It soon became clear, however, that the Soviets had delivered their rocket to a point a mile and a quarter from the bull's-eye in the Pacific 7,760 miles from the point it had been fired—an extraordinary performance...
...We feel confident that the United States has gained more in good will throughout the world, and especially among Africans and Arabs, than it could possibly have lost in military advantage, by relinquishing its air bases in Morocco with such ease and grace...
...It opposed the National Tuberculosis Act (which Congress passed unanimously...
...That was enough...
...A part of the clean-up in process represents a voluntary campaign, the result of anxiety among corporate officials and responsible advertising agencies over their reputations with an indignant and rebellious public...
...But much of the improvement is the direct result of appeals and threats of legal action against deceptive advertising by the Federal Trade Commission, and widespread publicity about the FTC's activities...
...old age and unemployment insurance ("a step toward Communism...
...His capacity to see and understand the other side's point of view prevented him from being a doctrinaire partisan on many issues...
...In other parts of the state Negro children are entering previously all white schools without fanfare...
...They appear determined not to let us feel the loss of the late John Foster Dulles too keenly, for what they say so often parallels the sterile, negative approach to foreign policy that dominated the thinking of President Eisenhower's late Secretary of State...
...He was a dedicated liberal but not a fiery crusader...
...He believed in what The Progressive was trying to do...
...Happily, Truman and Acheson command less and less attention as they go on crying defiance to a world of change...
...Cigarettes have abandoned tar and nicotine in their filter ballyhoo...
...Even the Virginia Association of School Administrators, composed largely of school superintendents, bowed to the political pressures of the time and refused to pass a resolution which would have merely put them on record as being "gravely concerned" by the closing of public schools...
...We of The Progressive knew him well and appreciated his many gifts...
...Thus, Acheson recently composed an essay for distribution through the North American Newspaper Alliance which reaffirmed his counsel of despair—to negotiate with the Soviets is to surrender to them and anything that seems like a Kremlin concession is bound to be a snare...
...To many of die peoples of the host countries, the presence of the U.S...
...Old Soldiers Never Cease Talking Many Americans of good will and peaceful purpose have grave doubts that the May conference at the summit will yield a great harvest of improvement in East-West relations, but they are convinced it is worth a try, considering the enormous stakes...
...Perhaps the President spoke without adequate consideration of the possible consequences...
...The first is what the chairman of the Association of National Advertisers calls a "crisis in confidence" in advertising on the part of the public...
...f There has been less difficulty in social relations than was expected...
...11n four states in the deep South, strict segregation of all public and most private institutions is still in force...
...The only language the Russians understand is that your fist is bigger than mine...
...Now, at the beginning of the current semester, more than 300 Negro students were transferred out of overcrowded Harlem schools to predominantly white schools elsewhere...
...They have no doubts...
...the Social Security Act...
...Air Force is simply a form of occupation, resentfully tolerated because of economic or military necessity...
...Without this assurance, Congress would almost certainly have rejected the agreements...
...The United States responded by negotiating an orderly withdrawal agreement which will leave Morocco free of foreign troops by 1963...
...Morris L. Cooke combined a rare genius in engineering with boundless idealism directed at man's capacity to harness the resources of nature for the greater good of all mankind...
...In Chicago, two radio stations dropped laxative commercials which offended listeners...
...Cocking the Nuclear Trigger President Eisenhower threw a chill into the hearts of a great many of his countrymen when he recently recommended that we give or sell nuclear armaments to any and all "countries we are confident . . . would stand by us...
...Since then the AMA has fought against compulsory vaccination for smallpox...
...There seems less hope that the AMA will recognize the decreasing effect of its empty epithets and allow itself to be carried, even kicking and screaming, into the Twentieth Century...
...federal aid to public health...
...A Washington (D.C...
...The crisis has been brought on by the rigged quiz shows and payola scandals, the competition in claims of rival products to the point of absurdity, and the increasing offensive-ness and poor taste in the advertising of items of a personal nature...
...These two old soldiers of the cold war never seem friskier than when they are deriding the prospect of negotiating settlements with the Soviets...
...In citing the Detroit News' irritation at the latest AMA broadside, Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan pointed out, "Everything that the AMA has ever opposed is catalogued as 'socialism,' or 'socialized medicine...
...To the younger generation his name will mean little, but Morris Llewellyn Cooke contributed prodigiously to the philosophy and works of the New Deal...
...Thus, if carried out, the President's proposal would result either in the nuclear arming of all of our forty-odd allies, or else in the disaffection and probable loss of a considerable number of them...
...Our national difficulty today is that we have many gifted engineers, but pitifully few with Morris Cooke's vision, idealism, and devotion to the public welfare...
...We knew this would happen," American officals jeered to the Japanese press...
...The bases originated in 1950 when Morocco was a colony of France...
...federal aid to reduce infant and maternal deaths...
...When the Russians shot their rocket into the Pacific, a "high official" of our government rushed into print with the sneering report that they had missed their target by "several hundred miles...
...The court decision abolishing the massive resistance laws was the major factor in changing Virginia's integrated education climate...
...Furthermore, Warburg continued...
...Star correspondent, George W. Oakes, in a roundup of the current status of integration in higher education based on information gathered by the Southern Regional Council and Southern School News, reports that "half of all Southern white colleges are integrated, a remarkable increase since 1948 when desegregation extended to less than twenty border state institutions...
...At many schools, Negroes live in dormitories with whites, and in at least two have been elected president of the dormitory...
...There is much to brood about in this accelerating exodus to Red Korea, but our concern here is for the self-defeating practice of American officials to shoot from the hip without aim or ammunition...
...One advertising man, whose approach has shifted to a stress on humor, succinctly summed up this amoral attitude when he said, "Since fraud in advertising doesn't seem to be fashionable any more, some agencies feel they should entertain the consumer instead of lying to him...
...The AMA's Worn Out Brick "The genius who coined the term 'socialized medicine' but neglected to define it," says the Detroit News, "gave the medical profession a handy brick to heave at anyone or anything that threatens to upset the status quo as set down by the American Medical Association...
...He had survived a long and painful siege of cancer little more than a year ago, only to be stricken down without warning by a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of forty-seven...
...When the rules were changed, 5,300 Koreans registered immediately...
...But while these shadows must be erased, the picture is undeniably brighter year by year, and the lack of headlines on integration in higher education, as in the public schools, should not blind us to the genuine progress that is quietly being achieved...
...It did not seem to know that the Communists had called a boycott on registration offices because they rejected rules set up for screening applicants...
...It may be a long time before complete integration is accomplished in Virginia, but the signs indicate that it will happen—quietly...
...There is hope this year that Congress will turn its back on the wolf-cries of the AMA and decide the fate of the Forand bill on its merits...
...A year after refusing to buck massive resistance, the state's school superintendents have now quietly and unanimously gone on record backing "a sound system of free public schools...
...The Russians don't want to agree with anyone," he said...
...When Earl W. Kintner, the soft-spoken head of FTC, predicts, "In the next year I think you'll see a lot of improvement in the quality of advertising," his words are as much a warning to admen as they are a hopeful forecast for consumers...
...Perhaps on second thought he will not pursue what may have been an off-the-cuff press conference suggestion...
...The character of this settlement was not only peaceful but friendly...
...We're clean—and besides, the public has a short memory...
...In 1958, when the school superintendents were afraid to speak out, Virginia's school teachers, by a ratio of nineteen to one, expressed grave concern over the closing of schools, and urged the governor and the state assembly to enact legislation which would reopen them with state support...
...A generation ago, the AMA opposed reporting tuberculosis cases to a public authority (a practice which is the foundation of all TB control...
...Eighteen months ago, the future of integrated public education in Virginia looked bleak indeed...
...and government medical care for dependents of men in the armed forces ("harmful to national defense...
...His great love for the everlasting beauty of rivers, forests, mountains, and valleys found eloquent expression in much that he wrote and talked about on the political stump...
...It is only fair to point out that while this is a heartening progress report, there are many dark shadows in the picture...
...The present trend toward truth in advertising is encouraging, but we would feel more confident for the future if we could be sure that the FTC would continue—and better still, strengthen—its drive to police advertising on behalf of honesty and the public interest...
...free diagnostic centers for TB and cancer...
...President Eisenhower, for all his faults, is determined to seek peace wherever possible...
...f Catholic institutions are eighty per cent desegregated, public colleges fifty-two per cent, and lay private schools twenty-six per cent...
...Congressman Aime J. Forand, Rhode Island Democrat and author of the bill, described it in detail in last month's issue of The Progressive...
...The current target for the AMA's time-worn brick is legislation now pending before Congress which would provide insurance against hospital and surgical expenses for older persons under the Social Security program...
...Two Americans who do not share this mood of part doubt and part hope are former President Harry S. Truman and the man who made foreign policy for him, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson...
...The true wisdom in world affairs, he insisted, is to be found in West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's total rejection of any accommodation with the Soviets—except one in which all our terms would prevail and all of Russia's would be refused...
...Richard L. Neuberger The sudden death of Senator Richard L. Neuberger has deprived the nation of one of its most thoughtful political figures and The Progressive of one of its most valued contributors...
...It seems even more incredible that they fail to realize, after bitter experience, that by belittling Communist achievements, before they have the facts, they are playing squarely into Communist hands...
...The result: correspondent William M. Stoneman cabled the Chicago Daily News from London that when "it was subsequently indicated that the Russians had been right on the beam, public reaction to the feat was not only particularly strong in favor of the Russians, but also critical of the United States for pooh-poohing them...
...When the Moroccans gained their independence a few years ago, they politely invited the United States Air Force to depart...
...We hope he won't because there are perilous implications in such a move, as James P. Warburg, one of our ablest analysts of foreign affairs, has so clearly emphasized...
...And in Colleges If developments in public school integration offer hope for the future, the progress in the South at the college level is even more striking...
...Following closely, as it did, the worldwide disappointment over Charles De Gaulle's policy of stubbornly elbowing France into the nuclear club, the President's proposal to arm our allies with nuclear weapons was a crushing blow to rising hopes for a nuclear test ban agreement and, ultimately, general disarmament...
...immunization against diphtheria and other preventive measures by public health agencies...
...voluntary health insurance ("inciting to revolution...
...American officials were suddehly silent...
...This seems a very strange proposal," Mr...
...Much integration is still token...
...In a recent interview in Miami, the former President argued that there was no use in summit talks with the Russians...
...Fraud Is Out of Fashion As unlikely as it may seem to cynical television viewers, there is a growing possibility that at least some and perhaps even a good deal of the advertising presented on the airwaves in the future will not only be reasonably truthful but relatively inoffensive...
...Shooting from the Hip Two events during the past month illustrate how American officials with a tendency to talk before the facts are at hand are giving the Communists a great deal of extra propaganda mileage out of some of the Communists' activities...
...That's the whole of it...
...Good Housekeeping magazine reports "a number of leading national advertisers have submitted their TV commercials to us for review," and for Good Housekeeping's respected "Seal of Approval...
...Today, massive resistance is dead, laid low by the federal courts...
...authorities in Japan...
...The surveys disclosed that: f More than 250 public and private Southern colleges admit Negro students...
...in time of trouble...
...Blue Cross ("a half-baked scheme...
...federal aid to medical education (favored by medical school deans, the American Hospital Association, the American Dental Association, and most public health administrators...
...school health services...
...But considering the catastrophic perils of the nuclear arms race, certainly no one but men who have not had a fresh idea in a decade can inveigh against making the effort...
...But then the registrations stopped...
...He wrote more than a hundred articles for us during the past two decades...
Vol. 24 • September 1960 • No. 4
