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 r~ F )o