Stventy-Sixth Year
EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS
kPOWER"
andStrikes, Labor Legislation. and Nonsense4
POETRY by MARK R. KI LLNGSWORTH r
Are ie 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN ARBOR, MICH.
NEws PHONE: 764-0552
Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the inidividual opinions of staff writers
or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints.
, AUGUST 9, 1966
NIGHT EDITOR: MEREDITH EIKER
Coring to Grips With
Conflict of Interest
MANY PERMANENT MEMBERS of the
University-faculty and administra-
tion - are clearly in danger of being
caught in violation of a new state law
stringently prohibiting a state official,
broadly defined, from keeping a position
on a firm having business connections
with his particular state agency.
President Harlan Hatcher and Regent
Robert Briggs were named in Sunday's
Detroit Free Press as being two Univer-
sity officials who might be affected by
the new law. Briggs is executive vice-
president of Consumers Power Co., in
which the University owns some $658,000
in stocks and bonds. President Hatcher
last year drew $9,300 in directors' fees
from Detroit Edison Co., in which the
University owns over $963,000 in securi-
ties. He is also on the board of the Ann
Arbor Bank, with which the University
maintains commercial accounts.
THEY ARE CERTAINLY not the only
University officials who play such dual
roles. It has been a fact of life for a long
time around here that many administra-
tors are both officials and businessmen
of some sort.
It would be foolish to suggest that
Briggs, President Hatcher or other Uni-
versity officials have used their connec-
tions for shady manipulations.
Yet it has to be realized that such
manipulations will be all but assumed by
those charged with enforcing the new
conflict of interest law. It's reasonable
that they should, as susceptible to misuse
as such relationships historically are.
Moreover, they must do so if they are to
do their duty to the state's people.
This is why it is gratifying to find that
Briggs welcomes an investigation by the
state attorney general into his business
relations with the University. Hopefully
President Hatcher's refusal to comment
on the Free Press reports masks a sim-
ilar intent rather than a vain hope that
things will blow over, for they certainly
will not.
IT WOULD BE VERY WISE for the Uni-
versity to extend Briggs' offer and it-
self investigate, or aid the attorney gen-
eral in investigating, conflicts of interest
here. Such an offer would be wise from
both a legal, preventing as it would the
possibility of later charges, and a public
relations standpoint.
The University is only one of six state
colleges mentioned by the Free Press as
possibly harboring such relationships. Be-
ing the first of the six to offer to get in
line with the new law before it goes into
effect this spring could help a sagging
state image.
-LEONARD A. PRATT
Co-Editor
Stopping the
Unstoppable
ARDNER ACKLEY, chairman of the
President's Council of Economic Ad-
visors, hit the nail on the head as he an-
alyzed the country's economic dilemma at
Sunday's commencement exercises.
He realizes that it is the struggle be-
tween workers and industry for a larger
share of the nation's productivity which
is the basic cause of rising wages and
prices and, therefore, inflation.
He admitted that it is the rising labor
costs which constitute two-thirds of the
cost of production, plus an attempt by
industrial powers to maintain their rela-
tive economic status that is the initial
factor in rising prices.
ACKLEY POINTED OUT that, "A na-
tional wage and price policy consistent
with overall price stability - yet which
permits the necessary readjustments of
relative wages and relative return of cap-
ital-is no easy task to devise."
That our country has been able to
survive economically without such drastic
measures can be attributed to rising cred-
it (national income on interest has dou-
bled since 1958), rising national deficit in
trade and our productivity, which is ab-
sorbing much of the price and wage in-
creases. I
Ackley realizes the causes of the eco-
nomic problems of the nation, and, un-
like many politicians who are afraid to
take a stand against rising wages for po-
litical reasons, he will conscientiously in-
form and advise the President. Now the
question is: Will President Johnson act
conscientiously?
--MICHAEL DOVER
Special To The Daily
WASHINGTON - "If there were
any law that would preserve
the free enterprise system, protect
individual rights and prevent
strikes it would have been passed
long ago," Senator Gaylord Nelson
of Wisconsin told his Senate col-
leagues last week.
Nonsense.
To repeat: Like practically every
other aspect of the current airline
strike, nonsense.
THE COUNTRY is now witness-
ing a buck-passing spectacle
scarcely without rival in the his-
tory of labor relations. The Presi-
dent has made quite clear his re-
luctance to do anything to get
the striking machinists back to
work; Republican Senators like
Dirksen of Illinois and Javits of
Net York are perfectly content to
force him to do something.
And while the Republicans see
a great advantage in forcing the
President's hand, some important
Democrats do not; for what might
seem like good public policy in
the short run-get something to
stop the airline strike-could be
a political albatross in the long
run, particularly in view of the
administration's lack luster record
in bringing home defeat of the
repeal of section 14(B) of the
Taft-Hartley Act.
Hence men like Dart of Mich-
igan and the two Kennedys both
voted against the emergency reso-
lutions which the Senate passed
last week to end the airline strike.
IT IS, OF COURSE, tragic that
politics should have gotten in-
volved in the airline strike. It is
tragic whenever government gets
involved in any strike, or even
seems likely to do so-for then,
most labor relations experts agree,
the chance that labor and man-
agement will settle their dispute
themselves begins to dive and the
likelihood that they will pass the
buck to the government soars.
As Senator Nelson's speech in-
dicates, practically everyone here
finds it difficult or impossible to
find a formula whereby strikes can
be prevented or ended.
All the formulae to this end
which have been suggested or dis-
cussed would either increase gov-
ernment's role in pre-strike prob-
lems (which makes strikes more
likely, as just seen) or would let
government -stop strikes altogether
(Which has severe philosophical
and political deficiencies suggest-
ed by Senator Nelson).
The only other solution is simply
not to worry or bother about try-
ing to involve government, which
puts the country back where it
started.
SO FAR, ACCORDING to the
Washington Post, Labor Secretary
Wirtz, Supreme Court Justice
Fortas, Clark Clifford (President
Truman's 1 e g a l counsel) and
David Ginsburg (a member of the
presidential board appointed ear-
lier to try to head off the current
strike) have all been trying to
find an acceptable formula to
solve strikes-without success.
It is not surprising. Prohibiting
or stopping strikes implies the
kind of government intervention-
ism (and, incidentally, anti-un-
This, in fact, is one
qualms lawyers and labor+
have about government
legislation. But it is only
them.
of the
experts
strike
one of
ionism) of the days of the Hay-
market riot.
But condoning such strikes with-
out doing something-anything-
suggests that unions may incon-
venience with impunity anyone
they want to just to get whatever
demands, just or unjust, they have.
In short, the argument finds
you can't have your cake and eat
it, too. You can't have a strike
without inconveniencing the pub-
lic; you can't end public incon-
venience without stopping the
strike.
IS THAT SO?
There is at least one agreement
-now in force - which suggests
that this old chestnut, which is
at the root of the inability here
to/ come up with some palatable
strike legislations, is not complete-
ly applicable.
This agreement permits strikes
but won't inconvenience the public
a bit. Signed by the Dunbar
Furniture Corp. and Local 222 of
the Upholster's International Un-
ion (AFL-CIO) of Berne, Ind., it
goes like this:
SHOULD UNION and manage-
ment disagree on terms for a new
contract, and the union decides to
call a strike (or the company a
lockout), a "strike" can occur-but
everyone stays on the job.
Rather than walk off the job,
Dunbar's workers keep on work-
ing. But they do forfeit one-third
of their weekly paycheck, how-
ever, and the company deposits
this in the local bank. The com-
pany must match this loss with a
deposit of its own equal to the
total payroll.
If the two parties agree on a
new contract within four weeks
after the "strike" is called, both
the workers and the company get
all their money back.
If the "strike" is settled within
two weeks after that, the workers
and the company each get 75 per,
cent of their deposit back; the
remaining 25 per cent goes to a
mutually acceptable charitable
agency.
If the "strike" is settled in the
seventh week, half the deposited
money is returned and half is
forfeited; only a quarter of it is
returned if the "strike" is not
settled until the eighth week. If
the "strike" lasts nine weeks or
more, it becomes a real strike and
the workers are free to leave their
jobs.
THE ADVANTAGES of this
"strike-wrk agreement o v e r
other proposed strike-settling ideas
--moral persuasion, government
"study committees," advisory
b o a r d s, compulsorynarbitration
and so on-are apparent.
The economic punishment of
the traditional strike is also quite
present in the Dunbar plan:
Workers experience a complete
loss of income and the company
suffers what amounts to a 100 per
cent increase in labor costs if the
"strike" isn't settled.
Moreover, while there is noth-
ing to prevent the union from us-
ing its strike fund or the company
its accumulated profits to help
ease the effects of a strike bath
parties are prohibited from seek-
ing outside financial assistance.
The application of such a plan
to labor disputes of national sig-
nificance is not at all obvious; but,
on the other hand, it scarcely
seems impossible to apply it.
I SUCH A NATIONAL "strike-
work" law could, for example, per-
mit the President to appoint a
special panel whenever a strike
(or an imminent strike) is affect-
ing the national interest, creating
an emergency situation\ or incon-
veniencing the public seriously.
This board would establish an
appropriate week/forfeit percent-
age schedule a la Dunbar for the
industry involved, and set other
necessary guidelines for the
"strike-work" provision.
In this way, the President could
act swiftly to prevent public in-
convenience without prohibiting
strikes and without encouraging
labor and management to shirk
their responsibilities and pass the
buck to government.
Since the strike-work provides
an actual financial incentive to
early solution to the strike--the
return of the parties' deposited
-money - and, similarly, an exact
measure of what it will cost to
prolong it, the plan would in many
respects make government inter-
vention and all its disturbing im-
plications unnecessary.
THE PLAN'S TWO major draw-
backs are its novelty and its ob-
scurity. What applies' to Berne,
Ind.-a very small town where a
large part of its citizens are Dun-
bar employes, might not apply to
United States Steel or the United
Auto Workers.
It will undoubtedly take a good
deal of time and trouble to polish
and shape the Dunbar plan to fit
a national context and handle di-
verse industries. But to the public
this cannot possibly compare to
the inconvenience and confusion
of strikes which are coming in-
creasingly costly-and increpsingly
unmanageable.
.,v
"From Calculus to Hard,. Cold Steel",
By MICHAEL HEFFER
'FROM CALCULUS to cold
steel .."
It sits in the Union, open to the
frontispiece which shows a rifle
with a bayonet on one end, and
the man who used it on the other.
It's the 1943 Michiganensian, and
it is a very uninviting yearbook.
True, its limited goals are reach-
ed-it captures those familiar
campus scenes; it immortalizes
those never-to-be-forgotten or
never-experienced moments when
we were young and gay; and it
faithfully records those stilted in-
dividual poses.
BUT THERE IS something
wrong with the 1943 Ensian as it
sits rather proudly, or rather
boldly, in a brightly illustrated
glass case, bringing gloom to an
otherwise cloudless array of Uni-
versity photographs.
The mind of the practical stu-
dent of 1966 reels with two ques-
tions: why, from our bountiful
collection of Ensian photographs,
was this one chosen to grace the
Union, and how on earth did
the student Ensian's editors of
1943 ever choose such a disen-
chanting scene?
If you go to the right young
men on campus, they will tell you
that the picture is in the window
to dispel aluminatic (character-
istic of alumni) fears that the
University is unpatriotic, and it
was originally chosen by those too
patriotic to have good taste.
(There is, after all, a limit to
everyone's self-control while emo-
tionally bound.)
BUT THEY WILL not, I fear,
ever tell you what is wrong with
the picture. And whether you are
a ''my country right or wrong"~
man, ora "my principles right or
wrong" man, you must sense that
something on that frontispiece is
in the wrong book.
There is something wrong with
it even when we remember that it
is 1943, and that inside we shall
probably find young men at ROTC
drill or with their dates at a mili-
tary ball, and that at the end of
the book we shall see photographs
of the Ensian staff and the other
publications staff, and they will
be mostly female because the men
are at war.
These things inside will be ap-
propriate because there will be no
doubt that the uniforms are but
covers, and the drilling young men-
will have dates that evening or at
worse will be at the library.
BUT THERE WILL always be
everything wrong with the fron-
tispiece. And it will be wrong be-
cause it says "from calculus to
cold steel" and it says it in
orange, when everyone knows it
should be red or black-there is
finality in that statement that
was never thought up in orange.
And it will be wrong because
the man in the picture is a man,
too far from youthful optimism,
too old for fraternity tricks, too
old to be just graduating, wet be-
hind the ears. His pose is down-
ward, sticking the enemy, not like
the statuesque pose of youth,
weapon parallel, eyes upward to
the day when the fighting will
cease.
"FROM CALCULUS to cold
steel." While the student learns
his calculus he can hear the
forging of the steel, and, although
when his calculus is done the
steel will be learned, there can
be no real mixing of the two,
1943 Ensian notwithstanding.
No, female Ensian compilers of
1943, they never really made those
young men into schoolboy-soldiers.
They were students, then they
were soldiers, but never the twain
met. Your soldier doesn't belong
with his youthful companions,
stuck with them as he is, for all
eternity.
There's proof of all this, a
proof that perhaps you too knew
how incongruous a picture you
manufactured. "From calculus to
cold steel." There is a hard cold
ring in that phrase, but it is only
the reality of the subject that
keeps it from ringing hollow.
YOUR STEEL-may be cold, sol-
dier of the frontispiece. It may
be cold on the ROTC parade-
ground. But that's because you
are not using it.
Hold it against your chest, hold
a stainless steel knife against your
chest and feel its coldness. But
hold its thin cutting edge against
you, and feel how the tempera-
ture is lost with the feeling.
Then plunge it inside, and tell
me whether it is cold or hot. Run
the steel through a living animal,
or a cooking roast and register its
temperature..
I do not know, and I doubt you
Ensian ladies knew, whether life-
stealing steel feels hot or cold, but
if it's cold it is but the cold of
death you feel.
And I believe when the ladies
of the Ensian chose "cold steel"
they were admitting they knew as
much of war as they could be ex-
pected to, for that picture and
that knowledge do not belong in
college.
THERE ARE too many wars to
catch to drop learning and the
seeking of a degree, although late-
ly there's been enough of the la-
ter to enable one to miss the for-
mer.
No, in 1943, as now, the warriors
became such after college, when
they discovered theymhaddlittle
enough time to be men, despite
the fact they wanted to be boys a
bit longer.
They left college and became
men, and discovered what the
steel feels like when its Journey is
completed and its passenger is
death. It is not a discovery Mr.
Johnson or Mr. Ho Chi Minh par-
ticularly want to make for them-
selves, and it is an experience most
of us would rather miss.
BUT SOME of us will know.
..
Some Predictions About
The Viet Nam War
IF PAST ADMINISTRATIVE preludes to
escalation in Viet Nam establish any
sort of reasonable precedent for predic-
tion, it looks as if we may invade North
Viet Nam and thereby trigger a ground
war with China.
Before the bombings of the oil depots
in' Hanoi and Haiphong, Johnson, in a
press conference, said that he was not
sure whether the U.S. would bomb but
it was possible. The qualification and ra-
tionale behind every escalation was used;
if they escalate so shall we because "we
must raise the cost of Communist aggres-
sion."
Two weeks later we bombed.
LAST WEEK Secretary Rusk in a press
conference, when questioned about in-
vasion of the North, said that we would
not invade the north unless "it was abso-
lutely necessary."
Will we invade in two weeks?
It is very likely that we will. It may be
a little longer or it may happen sooner.
We have already made the first step by
bombing the demilitarized zone. We have
shipped in the famed 4th Division, some-
times referred to as the "Ivy Division"
which won fame in World War II and the
Korean War. This implement to our
ground forces raises the total of U.S.
forces to 285,000. The addition to our arm-
ed forces was done for one of two, or
both, reasons.
We are either loosing a fairly large
number of men or battles and, therefore,
require the additional forces (which is
doubtful according to defense figures),
or we are planning some new strategy
which requires experienced troops.
THE PROBLEM then is one of "what
happens next?" If we do invade the
our troops to combat this new form of
"Communist aggression." Russia, as a re-
sult of her defense pact with China in
1950, will be obligated to defensively sup-
port China. Someone will feel obligated
to support us.
And we may find ourselves in the midst
of World War III.
-PAT O'DONOHUE
False Economy
In Lansing
STATE EMPLOYES are converging on
Lansing today to attempt to improve
their wage scale in an economy minded
state.
The state's legislators, among the best
paid in the country, recently received a
pay raise. State employes were not as
fortunate. Their average wage is a dollar
less °an hour than the average in pri-
vate industry.
Because of this recruiting is difficult
and between 400 and 1000 state jobs are
constantly vacant as workers go to other
work or retire. Many departments are
constantly understaffed. Especially acute
in hospitals, this condition means some-
one must fill the gap, creating heavy work
loads and employe discontentment.
DISCONTENTMENT has already
caused the percentage of employe
turnover to rise in the past year from 14
per cent last year to 19 per cent this year.
In the same period, new hirings have fall-
en well below former averages.
Standards established to promote qual-
ity have slowly been lowered. Some for-
mer requirements have been removed al-
toether.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR:
VOICE versus the Plant Department
To the Editor:
AS A STUDENT of the Univer-
sity of Michigan, and as a
member of Voice, the Ann Arbor
chapter of Students for a Demo-
cratic Society, I would personally
like to express my amazement and
disgust regarding the actions of
the University Plant Department
towards Voice's rights of political
expression.
The arbitrary and unwarranted
action of the Plant Department in
removing and destroying one of
Voice's Diag signs this past week
was taken, in my opinion, not
merely because of administrative
bungling, but out of a deliberate
"Don't Worry. They
It To Us
attempt to impede and harass this
student group's freedom to pub-
licly disseminate its views on po-
litical questions.
THIS IS NOT the only exam-
ple of discrimination by the Plant
Department against Voice; on
Friday, a second Diag sign belong-
ing to Voice was destroyed by van-
dals in plain view of a group of
Plant Department employes-who,
according to eyewitnesses, were
within 100 feet of the incident-
who stood by watching this act of
vandalism without taking action.
In addition, at a Voice-spon-
sored rally held on Friday in front
Couldn't Be Doing
Again"
of the General Library had to be
run without the use of sound
equipment because the Plant De-
partment failed to deliver micro-
phones and speakers to the Diag,
as had been promised by the Of-
fice of Student Affairs.
What is to be concluded from
all this, in my opinion, is not that
these incidents occured through
simple errors in administration;
rather, a definite pattern of in-
terference with basic rights and
freedoms seems a quite logical in-
ference. Voice has broken no Uni-
versity regulations; both Diag
signs and the Friday rally had
been expressly approved by the
Office of Student Affairs; and
yet, an agency of the University,
acting upon no clearly designated
authority, has taken upon itself to
act as a censorer of opinions on
the University campus.
THE LONG-TERM implications
of this matter are clear. Unless
these actions are reversed and re-
pudiated by the University, a pre-
cedent will be set whereby the
rights of expression of students
can be arbitrarily suspended-
without due process--at a lower
official's whimsy. I urge immed-,
iate action on this question by the
University; and I urge the Uni-
versity to speedily take the Plant
Department to task for this flag-
rant breach of conduct. Unless
these actions are promptly and
forthrightly repudiated-with as-
surances that they will not occur
again-the basic liberties of all
students will be p 1 a c e d in
Jeopardy,
Campus. The facilities on Lower
Campus are too far for the time
pressed students and faculty.
This is a sorry set of circum-
stances for which the University
itself must bear responsibility.
Surely the University realizes that
the output of students and faculty
is not just determined by class-
room and office space, but also by
their mental and physical condi-
tion.
THE IMPORTANT point is to
have athletic facilities near Cen-
tral Campus. If the University can
come up with some imaginative
new facilities that will induce a
larger number of people to under-
take weekly exercise. I will support
closing the old ones.
Where will the money come
from? Since gymnasiums contri-
bute to the productivity of stu-
dents and faculty, why not from
the University's general fund. If
this is not acceptable, why not
spend less on producing number
one athletic teams and more on
facilities.
-S. Philip Shapley, Grad
Professionals
To the Editor:
CHARLES Wilkinson's editorial
on the "Underpaid Profession-
al" (Aug. 5) started off in grand
form. Then drooped. Badly.
True enough, there is something
cockeyed about paying sports
gladiators and entertainers a hun-
dred times more than teachers,
Marxism?
To the Editor:
WAS MOST disappointed to
read Mr. Wilkinson's editorial in
Friday's Daily. It was simply one
more example of the intellectually
discredited collectivist myths so
often 'encountered on the pages of
The Daily.
Mr. Wilkinson complains that
"professional" people are under-
paid by the Capitalist system. This
is demonstrably false, but even if
true the suggested, or implied so-
lutions are totally unacceptable.
Mr. Wilkinson implies that since
people who are free to dispose of
their income as they please may
spend it foolishly, he, being wiser
than they, will confisicate part of
their property (income) and use
it for things they really need-
things he approves of.
How much will you need Mr.
Wilkinson? How much more than
the one-third already taken by
the state and federal govern-
ments? 50 per cent? 100 per cent?
THE INTELLECTUAL, f r o m
time immemorial, has dreamed up
ethical standards for the rest of
mankind only to have them ig-
nored. The masses are too dumb
to accept them, so why not impose
them by the power of the State?
Thus is the road to totalitarian-
ism paved with the good inten-
tions of the Mr. Wilkinsons of the
world.
Ah, but what is the alternative,
you ask? f could tell you, but if
you really understood the Capital-
ist system you so delight in at-
1
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