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 .. -1i.7 '7 7!.. 7 a.! _ messamaanammm mmme mmma mmma mmmm me.',','... <.ssa