Page 4-Friday, November 2, 1979-The Michigan Daily
4c 4
Ninety Years of Editorial I
Vol. LXXXX, No.50
Edited and managed by students at the U
IwL __ ____
Freedom
High prices spark a new gold
rush in the west
News Phone: 764-0552
niversity of Michigan
Chrysler gets a check
HE CARTER administration's de-
5. cision to bail the Chrysler Cor-
'poration out of its fiscal straits brings a
welcome sign of relief from the state of
'ZMichigan, the city of Detroit, and from
the hundreds of thousands of Chrysler
,employees and workers for whom
bankruptcy would have meant unem-
-loyment.
3 In saving Chrysler, the ad-
ininistration is not, as some have
'suggested, intruding hopelessly into
the free enterprise system and shoring
-,ip a company that the market forces
have destined to financial ruin. The aid
,package is not a reward for the bad
decisions of Chrysler management,
and the bail-out does not set any kind of
precedent for government intervention
when private companies cannot meet
their payroll.
Rather, what the president is doing
in recommending $1 billion for
'Chrysler is recognizing current
economic realities. The only thing to
gain by letting Chrysler collapse would
be a severe economic recession,
,massive unemployment, and a blow-up
'of racial hostilities in the-city of Detroit
"that would make the '67 riots look like a
fistfight. The "drop dead, Chrysler"
attitude may be intellectually more
satisfying than a slap on the wrist and
a check for $1 billion, but in the long
run, helping Chrysler is in the best in-
terests not of Chrysler, but of the coun-
try.
- What's more, the Chrysler
management, and the powerful United
Auto Workers, have shown that they
are willing to take the first steps to
shouldering responsibility for
Chrysler's economic collapse.
Chrysler reshuffled the management
staff, promoted outsider Lee Iacocca
to the board chairman position, and
recommended UAW President
Douglas Fraser for a seat on the
Chrysler board. The Fraser recom-
mendation is in itself an indication of
management's willingness to open its
decision-making process to outside
parties, including workers, and marks
e t. ..
I
Iacocca
what is perhaps the first real step
towards labor involvement in
American corporate decision-making.
The union too, under Fraser's steady
helm, has sailed against the winds of
high-wage settlements and settled for
less with Chrysler. For the union to ac-
cept a settlement less than that for the
other two automakers is a major con-
cession 'on the part of a union that
historically prides itself on across-the-
board equity. For the first time, the
union was forced to put a priority other
than the interests of its members at the
top of its bargaining agenda. The UAW
was forced to consider the economic
stability of Chrysler Corporation and
of the nation's economy in accepting a
less-than-fair deal for the Chrysler
workers, and in that courageous stand,
the union leadership must be
congratulated.
Now if the bail-out is approved, the
company will be able to avert bankrup-
tcy and collapse, and start on the long
road to recovery and a re-entry into the
competitive automobile market. But
the lesson of Chrysler must not be lost,
since it provides a test case of the
government's commitment to private
corporations, only when that company
and all involved, including labor, can
prove they can work together.
L . A I - TI1O T'! 11 f
EDITOR'S NOTE. T he high price of
gold has led to another gold rush in the
West. But it's very different from the one
in the frontier days, reports Mark Black-
burn, who writes on Western business
trends for PNS and the New York Times.
SAN FRANCISCO-Gold fever is raging
again in the West as the dollar declines.
Gold diggings are re-opening in the Mother
Lode country of California, and the
Homestake Mining Co.-a San Francisco firm
which owns the largest U.S. gold mine, in
South Dakota-is spending more on ex-
ploration than ever before.
BUT THE ACTION is hottest in Nevada,
where environmental restrictions are the
loosest.
"Quite an exciting time out there in
Nevada," said Robert Shoemaker, a Bechtel
Corp. metallurgist who is, reworking the
refuse of an old Nevada mine for his own ac-
count. "There's practically a geologist for
every rock.
"Helicopters are flying around all over the
place," he added. "They're staking claims by
helocopter."
THERE HAS EVEN been some gunplay as
prospectors have attempted to force their
way over rqancher's land-hence the airbor-
ne approach adopted by those who knew the
problems they face.
Old mines that have been reopened include
sites in the Comstock Lode, whose discovery
led 10,000 Californians to Nevada in 1860 and
made the fortune of the Hearst family.
Up to 25 new mines might come into produc-
tion in the West in the next few years, in-
creasing U.S. gold production by about 200,000
oz., or 20 per cent a year, according to W. C.
Bptterman, gold specialist in the U.S. Bureau
of Mines in Washington. The U.S. is small fry
among the world's gold producers, however.
INDIVIDUAL PROSPECTORS are also in-
creasingly searching rivers for gold either by
panning the old-fashioned way or diving in
with wetsuits and a kind of water-borne
vacuum cleaner that sucks up gravel, from
which particles can be separated.
But while visions of riches provide the
motive now as before, this new gold rush is
occurring in a context way from that of the
expanding republic of 100 years ago.
"The price of gold simply reflects the loss of
value of the paper dollar," said Homestake
Mining chairman Paul Henshaw. "America is
getting to be like a banana republic."
AT THE SAME time, the techniques used to
By Mark Blackburn
recover gold today involve refinements
unknown during the great rush that began in
California in 1849.
Nuggets are no longer to be found, but in-
visible traces of gold around old deposits, as
well as untouched deposits of gold too fine to
be seen, can be found by chemical tests.
In the Comstock Lode, said Donald Hopkins
of Houston Oil and Minerals Corp., "the low-
grade deposit forms a halo around the higher-
grade vein system that was mined out back in
its heyday."
THE MICROSCOPICgold-sometimes
called 'no-see-um gold"-can be located by
testing rock samples for arsenic and mer-
cury, which are associated with it.
"We've never seen any of the gold prior to
processing it," said William Wilson of Idaho
Mining Corp., which operates the Windfall
Mine at Eureka, Nev.
"It's all been . walked over probably a
thousand times," said Shoemaker.
The key to the new ventures is that gold
prices have risen to a point-$385 an oun-
ce-where it pays to move five tons of rock to
obtain a single ounce of gold.
"YOU CAN MOVE rocks for about $50 a ton
and make a profit," said Ray Hunter of the
California Mining Association. "A few years
ago you couldn't touch it."
The modern, chemical method of locating
this trace gold is accompanied by techniques
for separating it from the ore which were
equallt unheard of by the miners of '49. One of'
these, known as heap leaching, involves piling
up the ore and sprinkling it with cyanide
solution from rainburd sprinklers until the
gold leaches out. It is then separated from the
solution by another process.
Using such techniques, a Newmont Mining
Corp. operation at Carlin, Nev., the second
largest U.S. gold mine. produced 12 million
dollars in net income last year-a profit of
$80 an ounce.
Handsome as this profit seems. more gold
may be obtained as a by-product of copper
mining. Kennecott Copper Corp., obtained
nearly three times as much gold from a Utah
copper mine last year as Newmont did from
Carlin-400,00 ounces compared to 152,000.
BUT THE REWARDS are still suf-
ficient to persuade Houston Oil and
Minerals that it is worthwhile to remove 3.5
million tons of rock from an old pit mine in the
Comstock Lode to get at trace gold-and
silver-200 to 300 feet below the surface.
Much of the activity in Nevada is concentr-
ated in the northern part of the state-the
Comstock is on its western border with
California. Near Elko, best known in the
recent past for its numerous brothels,
Freeport Gold Co. has made a strike that may
be as big as Newmont's at Carlin.
A joint venture of Freeport Minerals Co.,
and FMC Corp., Freeport Gold is expected to
send president Joseph Farrell from New
York to Elko to direct operations.
MEANWHILE, ON the California side of
the Sierra Nevada, Placer Service Corp..has
leased old mines neae what were known as
the Malakoff Diggings and begun studies to
see if the faint traces of gold still undergroung
can be brought out at a profit.
Showmaker was not sanguine. "In my
opinion," he said, "the Mother Lode will
never produce again on a large
scale-because of the environmentalists."
Residents around the Malakoff Diggins,
who include many who moved there from
cities in recent years in search of a more quiet
life, recently rallied for a giant poetry
reading the featured Gary Snyder and Allen
Ginsberg in a rare joint appearance to raise
funds for the fight against the renewal of
mining.
OPENING THE mines notonly disturbed
the landscape but rased problems of what to
do with the waste, according to a Sierra Club
spokesman. If dumped in rivers, he said, it
could cause damage downstream. Dredging
for gold in the rivers could do likewise, he ad-
ded.
In Nevada, the miners' renewed gouging of
the earth has also aroused resentment among
those who have no expectation of sharing in
the profits. Hopkins said that around Virginia
City, built on the Comstock and now the cen-
ter of a retirement area, "the retired people
raised a lot of commotion against our
operation."
* But the commotion was not enough to keep
mining from going ahead in Nevada.
"The mining climate is very good there
compared to the rest of the states," said
Shoemaker.
Environmental restrictions have, however,
forced the closing of a Kennecott copper mine
where gold was recovered as a by-product.
With that, Nevada, which had been number
one among gold producing states, dropped to
third place behind South Dakota and Utah.
But when the new mines come into produc-
tion, said Robert Warren of the Nevada
Mining Association, "we do not expect that
Nevada will become and remain number
one."
Mark Blackburn wrote this piece for
the Pacific News Service.
Letters to
'..iuy 01 orutneriy iove:
J UST TWO months before
relinquishing his mighty throne,
Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo - the
king of big city corruption - has been
granted one last triumph. Like so
;many of his other victories during his
eight-year stint, this one threatens to
interfere with fair judicial process,
and the right of individual liberties to
be protected.
His latest win came not from his
cronies throughout the patronage-
dominated system, but from the cour-
ts. Three days ago, Federal District
Court Judge J. William Ditter
dismissed the major portion of a
federal lawsuit charging the mayor
!and other city officials with condoning
systematic and criminal violence by
the Philadelphia Police Department.
The judge has thereby succeeded in
kicking out of court the first potentially
powerful move to find the truth about
:the alleged atrocities committed by the
city's police officers.
The charges have been made for
years. Ever since a local newspaper
exposed numerous accounts of police
brutality, the issue has been a source
of friction for Rizzo and the citizens of
Philadelphia. By filing the suit, the
Justice Department was seeking to
finally determine the validity of those
accusations before a federal judge.
It was a bold move, the first time
that the federal government has gone
after an entire police department
rather than after individual complain-
ts of police brutality. Filed in late
summer, the case has soared to a high
spot on Attorney General Benjamin
tempt to investigate the alleged
brutality. In recent years, hundreds of
cases have been brought locally by the
district attorney against the depar-
tment. Most of them have been drop-
ped due to lack of evidence as the only
witnesses in many cases have been the
officers themselves. Protected by the
Fifth Amendment, many of these of-
ficers have refused to testify. .
This is not to say that all of the cases
of alleged police brutality can be
proven true. It is just that many cases
have never had a chance, either
because of lack of witnesses or illegal
intervention from Rizzo who used to be
police commissioner. What is needed is
the weight of a federal investigation,
and the resources it could command.
Unlike local investigators, the Justice
Department could send an army of
lawyers into Rizzo's territory to either
scrape up the dirt or leave the city
alone.
But the judge's ruling leaves the
mystery and uncertainty in place.
While some police brutality cases have
been proven, others have remained
suspended for years. The government,
as well as the city of Philadelphia, are
entitled to know the truth about thej
city's police department once and for
all. Have there just been isolated in-
cidents of brutality, or does it
represent a systematic pattern?
For now, Judge Ditter has prevented
the search for an answer.
BUSINESS STAFF
LISA CULBERSON.......................... Business Manager
To the Daily:
I had a chance to read the en-
tire Daily today, instead of my
usual habit of merely reading the
front page news. As always, I
found your newspaper to be quite
good. However, the page con-
taining Eric Zorn's Feoplemania
has me both disgusted and incen-
sed. Never in my life have I seen
such a poor example of what I'll
call journalism, although the
word hardly fits. Entitled
Peoplemanis, the column would
seem to be a copy of the widely
read "people" columns found in
the Detroit News and Free Press.
Whether or not these columns
deserve their poularity, at least
they do not break the basic jour-
nalistic rule of printing unbiased
articles. Apparently, by putting
his name in the headline, Zorn
feels he has the right to place his
opinions in the column. Not so.
Many blurbs contained in the
peoplemania page were news
items, and should have been
treated as such. The first rule of
journalism is not to report news
in a biased manner. Well,
referring to Amy Carter as "first
brat" in a news article is cer-
tainly breaking that rule. There
are places in a newspaper for
opinion; I would not try to
suggest that there aren't.
However, this is definitely not
one of them. A movie reviewer is
entitled to give his/her opinion,
for she/he is supposed to be a
cinema expert. Does Zorn believe
that he is a people expert? I don't
know, but I tend to believe that
Zorn is a first term staff writer
with a good idea about what
people will read. But while he
may understand proper
journalistic technique, certainly
his editors are aware of the kind
of material they should not print.
Let me refer to specifics. In Oc-
tober 24's issue of the Daily, Zornl
referred to Farrah Fawcett as
"overrated" and Tom Hayden as
famous people invariably have
their private lives open to public
scrutiny, but such a sensitive
story should be dealt with
delicately, if at all. The kind of
cute, sarcastic s tone used by
Zorn does not belong in any story
that deals with sensitive topics.
Not that I condone the type of
writing on the rest of the page. It
is easy to knock everyone one wr-
ties about, as long as one does not
have to substantiate one's
remarks. In addition, Zorn's
frequent use of sarcasm is a little
nausisting. Sarcasm is the humor
of idiots; most ten year olds can
use it effectively. If Zorn wished
to put some hum into the Daily,
let him develop something
original and intelligent, don't
allow him to insult the
newspaper's readers. Zorn is
perhaps the only writer I've ever
read who tries to be cute. I half
expected to see him dot his i's
with little hearts. It's bad enough
that he makes himself look like a
total fool, but he is giving the
Daily a bad name in the process.
I found one amazing irony in
the article of October 24. Zorn
saw fit to call Bo Talbert an "in-
flamed idiot", when in fact it is
Talbert's style that Zorn himself
tries to emulate. If Zorn wishes to
be thought of as the Bob Talbert
of the Daily, then he should con-
tinue his column. If not, perhaps
he can find a different outlet for
his classless cuteness.
To the Daily:
In response to your editorial
(Tuesday, October 9, 1979) on the
Pope's hypocrisy, I wish to offer
an apology on behalf of the Pope,
in his absence. I fully agree with
you that "there are no legitimate
views that lie contrary to the
brotherhood of man." I
acknowledge that in the past and
present many evil and immoral
actions have been committed in
the name of God or some other
The L
this country to preach the
teachings of the church," after
all, he is the Pope. Ultimately the
question which demands to be
raised is, "Was what John Paul
said inconsistent with promoting
the unity of the brotherhood of
man?" Your answer was a
booming NO! as you rallied
around the banner of brotherhood
And yet I can not help but wonder
what your conception of
brotherhood is that allows this
childish and irresponsible pran-
cing, among other things.
For it is your brotherhood that
has caused the situation of the
poor, that has caused the alar-
ming nuclear escalation, that has
caused the issue of abortion, etc.
For it is your brotherhood which
seeks to gratify its wishes and
desires without recognizing the
responsibilities inherent in those
very desires. Let us take the issue
of abortion for an example of this
insane pethodology. Sexual in-
tercourse is extremely
pleasurable, and even Freud .
recognized sexual activity to be a
major drive in human beings.
Naturally you seek to satisfy that
drive, and in order to avert the
responsibility of that action, you
cry out for abortion. Then you
justify murder by pleading that
the child would not have a good
life anyway. Your morality was
summed up in a joke heard by
Carson recently when he said,
"You know we have a very low
crime rate out here in California
. Everything is legal."
The fact that you have slated
the Pope as a hypocrite only ser-
ves to prove that you are ignorant
of the brotherhood and unity that
the Pope is fighting for.
If you can only see Christianity
as steeples and bells, rules and
regulations, then I say to you that
you do not see Christianity. Rules
and regulations are for people
who cannot take responsibility,
and to be auite truthful this world
)aily,,
the ideals of unity and
brotherhood. Your very own
ethic, which is egoistic hedonism,
by its very nature destroys all
hopes of brotherhood and unity,
for it only provides a base for
conflict. It is a shame that your
lofty ideals are in direct op-
position to your base system. -
In the Christian Church the
scriptures are authoritative, and
it is on the authority of scripture,
not man, that John Paul takes his
stand. In the scriptures is con-
tained a blueprint for living
which works if it is followed. It is
much easier to do a jigsaw puzzle
with a complete picture than it is
to guess where the pieces go.
If you do not accept the
authority of scripture, then there
is little I can say to you at this
juncture, for you obviously know
more about men than their
creator. All I can do is to'remindc
you of the covenant that God
wishes to establish with men, and
point out what must inevitably
happen. Go on with your lifestyle,
do what you please, follow your
desires, yet know that the effects
of your irresponsibility and self
gratification will multiply beyond
your wildest nightmares.
-James T. Watson
. November 1
To the Daily:
Re: your article "Signing for
the E.R.A." in the October 24
Today column. The Equal Rights
Amendment is an often misun-
derstood piece of legislation and
I'm afraid your article may in-
crese such misunderstanding. It
doesn't make it clear whether
McClenny, an E.R.A. advocate,
is telling us that the E.R.A. is
"against the concept of the whole
family structure" or whether it is
the Mormon Church which is the
perpetuator of this belief about
the E.R.A. After speaking with
Ms. McClenny I found that the
latter was the correct inter-
pretation. The E.R.A. is not, as