Seventy-Fifth Year
EDrrED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS Or THE UNIVERSrTY op MICHIG&AI
UNDER AUTHORrrY Of BOARD IN CONTROL Of STUDENT PusucATtroms
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR:
James. Hoffa and th
Congressional Electio
te- 420 MAYNARD 'r., ANN ARBOR, MiCH.-
NEws PHoNE 764-0552
rials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers
or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints.
OCTOBER 3, 1964 NIGHT EDITOR: JEFFREY GOODMAN
Org~anized Labor: Challenge
1T Take the Long View
HE NEWS IS FULL of strikes and
threatened strikes. The major em-
phasis ison four industries which are dif-
ferent enough that one sees only isolated
events at first. But there is a basic issue
common to all four disputes, and it gen-.
erates some significant implications.
The issue is automation. In all four
ndustries-newspapers, automobiles, rail-
oads, dock work-it threatens workers
eithet overtly or tacitly.
N THE LATTER two disputes, labor is
openly demanding guarantees against
ayoffs due to technological innovations.
Essentially, it wants to featherbed.
In the former two industries, labor is
lot opposing automation as directly. In-
tead, it is demanding the higher wages
nd increased benefits which alone will
nsure sbme kind of economic security.
gainst the day when automation can
o longer be halted.
In addition, the unions are asking cer-
ain significant work-rule changes. The
nited Auto Workers, for instance, is
emanding that the assembly line be
lowed down at General Motors and-stop-
ed altogether during more and longer
reaks. If the demand is met, not only
ill working conditions be improved but
considerable stumbling block will be'
laced in front of further automation.
or at the same time that the assembly
ine slowdown makes the whole process
ore inefficient (even if more humane)
t freezes technological development at
he present level. After all, the killing
ace of the work could more easily be re-
duced by adding new labor-saving ma-
hines instead of slowing the present
ones.
Thus while sme unions are openly
;lting automation, and thus possible
yoffs, others are making it financially
-as well as politically-very difficult to
novate by extracting a higher and high-
r price for relatively less and less pro-
.uctivity. For now, the unions gain se-
urity and morale.
UT IN THE LARGER picture, the
unions are in the same position as the
achine-destroyng Luddites of 19th
Century England.
For in all the disputes, labor is seek-
ng only 'a stopgap solution to a trend
hich will not be halted temporarily-
trend which will cease to be a danger
nly if it is allowed to develop at its own
ace, while being accompanied by the
ecessary changes in the social structure.
Labor and automation cannot remain
t an impasse forever, Gradually, despite
abor, management will automate. It is
trong enough to take slowdowns, strikes
nd featherbedding in stride and still in-
roduce new machines. This is not simply
fact of life: it is eminently desirable. In
he name of bettering itself, society can-
ot afford to bury technology's potential
auch longer.
4EITHER CAN LABOR. But neither
can anyone afford to let automation
roceed uncontrolled. If labor does not
ase halting progress and does not be-
m developing means for utilizing it prop-
rly, all of its immediate gains will be
neaningless.
For what happens to the men in the
actories as their energies become glar-
ngly irrelevant to production or the con-
nuation of services? When men were
eeded, at least they were doing some-
hing with their working day-despite
he possibly deadening nature of their ef-
orts.
In the near future, the worker will not
ave even this reassurance. Simply earn-
ng a living cannot, for long, adequately
ustify spending 40 hours a week doing
ssential make-work.
BE SURE, there are legitimate doubts
that the development of automation is
nore than the natural and thus unalarm-
rg evolution of what began in 1750. If
hings go slow enough, there should be
lenty of time to work out solutions-as
hrough retraining and the more gradual3
hasinglout of human labor.
-At least one set of figures, however,
oes not bear this judgment out: since
960, actual productivity per Oman hour
-to say nothing of potential productiv-
ty-has risen an average 3.5 per cent a
... ai a - oh s n h t e ~.s rr a n
erosion of human dignity in the factor-
ies is bound to worsen. If it hasn't al-
ready, the time will veryshortly come
when labor will have to reassess its poli-
cies.
Basically, it will have to cease being
concerned with perpetuating superficial
securities for present union members in
isolated industries and work toward set-
ting up the basic social mechanisms for
distributing equitably the benefits of an
automated economy.
What will men do with their lives'
when they are not needed in factories?
How will they earn a living? How will
the tremendous power concentrated in
the hands of those who control the ma-
chines be directed benevolently? These
crucial questions remain shockingly un-
heeded in today's unions.
THERE ARE AT LEAST three immedi-
ate answers to the first question. Un-
doubtedly, there will be an increasing
need for people to design and repair the
machines. Undoubtedly, the services sec-
tor of the economy-everyone from clerks
to doctors-can absorb a huge number of
people. Undoubtedly, America can send
many more people to give aid to the de-
veloping nations. But these tasks require
skill. Can enough men be trained in those
skills?
On the answer to that question hinges
the answer to the second. If indeed peo-
ple can be trained to do useful, profes-
sional-level work, they can still draw
an income. But what happens as ma-
chines to repair the machines are invent-
ed, as the computer takes over more and
more white collar jobs, as the developing
nations develop? If in the end enough
work cannot be provided for enough peo-
ple, society's ,resources might well have
to be distributed in the form of a guaran-
teed income.
THUS THE THIRD question: can those
resources-our tremendous productive
wealth-be left in private hands? If in-
deed they are increasingly the key to the
physical survival of the population, should
they- not be controlled by that popula-
tion?
And beneath these first questions,
even larger ones. If production and serv-
ices cannot occupy enough people, if
work as we now know it becomes im-
possible for many, great numbers of men
will have to-and more importantly, will
be able to-devote their energies to pur-
suit of fuller self-fulfillment through the
arts, through their leisure, through craft
trades. Where will they receive the neces-
sary training? How will they come-in a
society which equates physical labor per
se with self-respect-to regard self-reali-
zation as a worthy endeavor?
Abstractly, the answers-especially to
the last question-involve a moral and
ethical reordering. Practically, they are
a matter of education. Either way, they
deeply challenge man's ability to adapt
himself to new potentials in his environ-
ment.
IT IS NOT ONLY the labor unions which
must begin to look and act construe-
tively, realistically and farsightedly on
the implications of our burgeoning tech-
nology; the need is society-wide.
Nor is labor's simplistic, backward re-
sponse to automation's short - range
threats the only manifestation of the
reaction to the trend. All over the na-
tion one reads of crime, racial unrest,
mental sickness, apathy in politics and
education, black-and-white Goldwater-
ism, anti-intellectualism, the fragmenta-
tion of men's scope of concern. Each of
these ills is man's blind reaction to the
insecurities created by a physical order
which has not been internalized in the
human order.
PRTUNATELY, LABOR already has
the basis for being a leader in open-
ing discussion and effecting structural
change. That basis is its tremendous
membership and its tremendous political
power. In consistently supporting liberal
political thinkers, it already uses this
power to some extent. But in its own
concerns it demonstrates a dangerous
lack of understanding.
In selfishly attempting to perpetuate
its vested interests in an economic and
social structure which, like human labor,
;.4 U-be --"r ia .a.n AY' - - ..,t% &+% a intn
NEWJ TOOT~
TODAY AND TOMORROW:
t Look at the Warren Report.
By WALTER LIPPMANN
WHAT KIND OF opinion, I ask
myself, am I able and en-
titled to have about the report
of the Warren Com'mission? The
massive document, which was re-
leased over the weekend, along
with the twenty volumes of testi-
mony which are still to be pub-
lished, constitute the record of
the posthumous trial of Lee Har-
vey Oswald for the murder of
President John F. Kennedy.
No contemporary reader, it
seems to me, can set himself up
as an appellate court capable of.
reversing the verdict of the seven
commissioners. Only they and
'IKIRI':
wo- Thirs
Great
At the Cinema Guild
F OR MORE than half its length,
"Ikiri" is one of the most
hauntingly beautiful of modern
films. It is simply the story of
an old man, a pathetic nonentity,
who learns that he is to die ofk
cancer and seeks in his last days
to grasp some of the life that
he has missed.
We must admire director Akira
Kurosawa's audacity, for there is
no attempt to convey the facts
of the story through subtle al-
lusion. The man's background, the
fact of his illness and its signifi-;
cance are made brutally clear in
the opening moments. At first this
obtuse approach puts one off-is'
there to be nothing left to the
imagination?
But it soon becomes apparent
that the beauty of the film lies
not in the story itself, but in the
starkly simple telling of it. Kuro-
isawa is a master of the graphic,
visual image. He presents the pro-
tagonist stooped at the foot of
the stairs, enshrouded in shadows,
thereby expressing in one mo-
ment the pathos of the man's life.
ESSENTIALLY, the movie falls
into three parts, with the final
third being vastly inferior to the
first two. Setting out blindly to
discover what he has missed, the
old man falls in with a second-
rate novelist who sees embodied
in this man the novel he could
not write. Their journey through
a night of expensive drinks and
cheap dance-hall girls comprises
the first third of the movie.
The old man eventually finds a
woman who had worked in his of-
fice and seeks an affair with her.
But he demands too much involve-
ment and she protests with: "I
only eat and work."
East and work is all that there
has even been for him and if that
is all there can be, then he will
return to it and transform it into
something beautiful. He returns
to his job as a petty bureaucrat
and dedicates himself to the con-
struction of a park.
their counsel and their staff have
heard all the evidence that is
now available. Because Oswald is
dead and could not speak in his
own defense, it is not possible to
say-and the commissioners do
not say it-that this verdict is
conclusive.
* . .,
BUT WE MAY be confident
that the historians will find noth-
ing to make them question the
perfect good faith of the record,
which the seven commissioners
have compiled. These commission-
ers, individually and as a group,
are absolutely and entirely above
any suspicion that they might
have. or would have, or could have
doctored the record. This is a
judgment which we today are
qualified to pass on to posterity.
With this certainty about the
commissioners, and in view of the
scope and exhaustive detail of
their investigation, there is no
ground on which any contempor-
ary man, here or abroad, should
question the verdict. The verdict
is that Oswald alone murdered
President Kennedy, that he was
not a member of a conspiracy of
Communists, Cubans, or right-
wing extremists, and that Jack
Ruby who murdered Oswald was
not the agent of a conspiracy
to silence Oswald.
The commissioners are quite
aware that the truth, as they
found it, is stranger than fiction.
It is hard to believe. The truth
was confused and made incredible
by the mishmash of the first re-
ports from the Dallas police and.
by the press. But the truth about
the assassination itself was made
less credible by the fact that Os-
wald was murdered in the city
jail two days later. For if there
was a conspiracy, nothing would
have been so necessary to its suc-
cess as to silence Oswald.
* * * .
BECAUSE IT IS harder to be-
lieve the true story than it is to
believe some theory of conspiracy,
the commissioners have with
painstaking thorouhgness s e t
down in detail the facts as they
found them. As an example, let
us take the assumption which is
crucial to so much of the Euro-
pean literature of a conspiracy.
It is that President Kennedy was
fired on both from the Book De-.
pository Bldg.' behind him and
from the overpass in front of him.
The supposed proof of this is that
there was a hole in the windshield
of the car. But the fact of the
matter is, says the report, that
while the windshield was hit. it
was "not penetrated." The mark
was on the inside of the wind-
shield only, and was certainly
caused by a fragment from one of
the bullets that hit the President
and Gov. John Connally.
Having read a fair sample of
the European literature of con-
spiracy, I spent much of the
weekend reading what the report
says about every point that had
seemed to me puzzling. The report'
evades none of these points, and
it deals with all of them factually
and authoritatively.
THE REPORT is critical of the
measures taken to protect the
President, and it makes certain
recommendations which will.,of
course, be followed.
In general, it must be said. I
think, that this was the kind of
assassination which should have
been prevented. It is obvious, for
example, that Oswald had a're ord
which demanded that he be,
watched during a visit of the
President. It is obvious, too, that
it was gross negligence not to have
searched and guarded the build-
ings along the well-publicized
route which the President would
travel.
Finally, there is the general
rule that while it is never possible
to provide absolute protection if
the assassin is willing to die in
the attack, less fanatical men can
can be deterred by the fear of
being caught. Oswald tried to es-
cape. He was not prepared to die.
The crime therefore must stand
as one which should have been
prevented.
(c) 1964, The washington Post Co.
To the Editor:
STRONG DRIVE by the
Jimmy Hoffa organlztion in
Washington was recently begun
attempting to exert' a powerful
and siister influence over the
choice of a congressman for our
Second Congressional District.
This has come to light in a form
letter addressed to "Dear Fellow
Teamster," dated August 24, 1964,
written on stationery of the In-
ternational Brotherhood of Team-
sters. The source is "Washington
Office of James R. Hoffa."
Permit me to quote the very
first paragraph of this alarming
document: "Congressman George
Meader has been one of the in-
fluential members of the House
Judiciary Committee in- support
of a congressional investigation of
the Department of Justice "
* * *
WHY DES the International
Teamster, organization bother to
support such a man as Meader?
Could it be due to the Teamsters'
deep concern with improving Ann
Arbor, Washtenaw County, or our
Second Congressional District?
Unlikely! Could it possibly be
Meader's outstanding record of
creative, imaginative, and for-
ward looking legislation? Even
more unlikely!
In answer, the letter points out
that Meader "almost singlehandly
was able to defeat a particularly
obnoxious and tyrannical bill ...
a 'get Hoffa bill'." This bill "would
have clothed federal sleuths with
the sane sanctity that surrounds
our courts and protects jurors and
witnesses from bribery, threats,
and intimidation."
Concluding with the following
statements, toosappy even to
paraphrase, "I shudder to think
what permicious (sic) power might
have been placed in the hands of
the Justice Department if Con-
gressman Meader had not been on
the job," the letter is signed "fra-
ternally yours, Sidney Zagri, Leg-
islative Counsel." Withtears in my
1eyes, I read the red, white and
blue declaration: "We need men
like Congressman Meader in the
House of Representatives."
-, t
BUT THE voting students of
this University don't need a man
who for 14 years has voted against
scholarships to students, civil
rights, individual civil liberties and
the Peace Corps.
-Christopher Cohen, '7
Rebuttal on Rockwell
To the Editor:
TOHN WARREN, the chairman
of the Special Projects Com-
mittee of the Michigan Union,
presented in last Wednesday's
Michigan Daily the motives un-
derlying the invitation to 'George
Rockwell. He claims the commit-
tee is merely trying to disseminate
knowledge and that its role is
",to present an unbiased program
with ample opportunity foreach
student to form his own opinions
and conclusions about the issue
of discussion." Why he believes
the speech by Rockwell represents
an "unbiased program" is "beyond
my comprehension.
Since Mr. Warren stresses the
informative nature of the , pro-
gram, it is legitimate to ask the.
following questions: What are the
qualifications of Mr. Rockwell for
an informative lecture on Nazism
or totalitarianism? Is Mr. Warren
aware that there are experts on
this field both here at the Univer-
sity and also at other universities
(if an outside speaker is prefered)
who have studied this field in con-
siderable depth and who could
without any question impart con-
siderably more and deeper knowl-
edge than Mr. Rockwell would be
able to?
For a maximum of information
on an issue you do not look for
the 'protagonist. of a particular
side but for the expert. The pro-
tagonist is an appropriate speaker
only if an 'open issue is to be,
aired with respect to which people
may hold different points of view.
It is evident from Mr. Warren's
letter that this is precisely his
position. This is implicit in Mr.
Warren's reference to Rockwell as
"the advocate of a controversia
issue" followed by the following
statement: "Knowledge of any
subject is not complete-nor ade-
quate - unless that subject has
been viewed from its various pos-
sible angles." The basic question
is then, do Mr. Warren and the
responsible administrators of the
University believe that there are
various possible angles from which
to view Nazism?
* * *
AT A LECTURE at the Univer-
sity of Minnesota last March
Rockwell made the following
statement concerning the murder
of six million Jews by the Germans
infWrd War II., "The only ones.
that were gassed were the same
'ones that we're going to gas-those
who are committing Communist
treason." Mr. Rockwell forgot to
explain in which way, for example,
little children could have .dom-"
mitted treason. He forgot to point
out that not a single one of the
Jews who were gassed was ever
convicted of treason even though
Germany had .the strictpst laws
not only against treason as such
but even against any kind of Com-
munist activity.
Translated into plain English,
Rockwell Is advocating the mur-,
der of the American Jews. Do Mr.
Warren and the responsible ad-
ministrators of the ;Untersty be-
'lieve that there are various pos-
sible angles (maybe pro or con)
from which to view the advocacy
of such an act? And a further
question suggests itself: Do Mr.
Warren and the responsible ad-
ministrators of the University be-
lieve that there are various pos-
sible angles from which to view
the- murder of six million human
beings by the Germans during
World War II?
MY ENTIRE FAMILY has been
murdered by the Nazis; and I must
confess to be rather surprised that
Christians in the year .1964 are
still debating the question wheth-
er the murder of my parents was
possibly justified and whether now
my wife and I and my children
ought to be murdered too. I am
surprised that the advocacy of
such acts is referred to by Chris-
tians with such euphemisms as a
"philosophy," a "creed,' or - an
"ideology," terms used in the letter
of Mr. Warren. I am surprised
that not one voice of protesc has
been raised by my Christian col-
leagues on the faculty against the
Idea that the commission of mur-
der is an open issue which can be
viewed from different angles
The issue. is. not freedom of
speech since there cannot be any
freedom to advocate murder, par-
ticularly not according to the
Christian ethics.
-Ernest G. Fontheim
Research Physicist,
Space Physics Research
Laboratory
FOR FUN:
Hallelujah
At the Campus Theatre
HERE IS no formula except
love-they loved making it:
Adolfas Mekas, writer ani di-
rector,
Peter Beard, actor,
Marty Greenhaum, actor,
in "Hallelujah the Hills."
By folly out of nonsense, a new
track record. Leave your mind at
home, take your gonads or your
soul, whichever you believe in, and
enjoy, enjoy. People are playing:
it's fun to see.
A jester, a dervish, a human
being at play. And the music is not
from Mantovani but a brass choir,
a flute, a recorder, etc.
* * *
THE PLOT isn't really there:
two suitors alternated summers
and fall in courting her for seven
years. "In the eighth year," the
opening title informs us, "Vera
tired of waiting . . . and married
Gideon (a third man-the vil-
lain) ."
A trusty jeep and winter New
England;snow, forest and rivers,
a ramshackle building: these are
the only props, and used well. The
action is a madman's dance, inter-
,rupted by reminiscence and take-
offs on the standard movies. This
movie has everything "Tom Jones"
did without the plot: it succeeds
where the Beatles ("A Hard Day's
Night) failed.
HAVE YOU SEEN a six-foot
high cook fire? The evil villain,
eye-patch and all, galloping down
on you on his white horse waving
a saber-while you shoot at him
with your rifles? A Jeep tied to
a hitching post? They are all here,
with a naked man dancing in the
two-foot deep snow.
PEOPLE MADE this film about
people, and enjoyed making it.
You will enjoy seeing it.
-Robert Farrell
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