mm - 1~ p Fifty-Eighth Year { ~ Edited and managed by students of the Uni- versity of Michigan under the authority of the Board in Control of Student Publications. John Campbell ...................Managing Editor Nancy Helmick ...................General Manager Clyde Recht ..........................City Editor Jeanne Swendeman.........Advertising Manager Stuart.Finlayson ................Editorial Director Edwin Schneider .................Finance Manager Lida Dales .......................Associate Editor Eunice Mintz..................Associate Editor Dick Krau......................Sports Editor Bob Lent ..................Associate Sports Editor Joyce Johnson..................Women's Editor Betty Steward .........Associate Women's Editor Joan de Carvajal ..................Library Director Melvin Tick ..................Circulation Manager Telephone 23-24-1 Member of The Associated Press The Associated Press is exclusively entitled to the use for re-publication of all news dispatches credited to it or otherwise credited in this news- paper. All rights of re-publication of all other matters herein also reserved. Entered at the Poet Office at Ann Arbor, Mich- IWn, as second class mail matter. Subscription during the regular school year by carrier, $5.00, by mail, $6.00. Member, Assoc. Collegiate Press, 1947-48 Edlitorials published in The Michigan Daily are written by members of The Daily staff and represent the views of the writers only. NIGHT EDITOR: ARTHUR HIGBEEB Haircut Heresy T ODAY IS D-DAY for IRA's much pub- licized "Operation Haircut," and as the picket army takes the field against local bar- bers accused of discrimination, there are several things which should be seriously con- sidered. First of all, from the lack-of opposition to "Operation Haircut" which has been voiced either editorially or in letters to the editor in The Daily, it might appear that there is campus-wide support for the maneuver-- that is not the case. Many students have refrained from op- posing the movement because they are fundamentally in favor of the principle and suppose that some method of ac- complishing this aim is better than none at all. This is a dangerous assumption be- cause IRA's method in this case could do far more harm than good, and to sup- port it by passive silence only encour- ages its leaders. Sociologists long ago gave up the theory that a nod from a legislature could wipe the human slate clean of all prejudices and dis- crimination. Probe ANY person deep enough and you're bound to find some prejudice- perhaps it's what makes him human. Most of these prejudices wear away slowly like stone steps, diminished not by tramping feet or sledge hammers but by the weathering processes of reason, com- mon sense and understanding. This is why "Operation Haircut" should really be developing these senses WITHIN people instead of trying to mold them exter- rally to the empty form of an ineffective law. The second objection to "Operation Hair- cut" is the amount of coercion and emotion IRA has used thus far in its campaign. IRA sent a letter to the Ann Arbor Barber's Association, Nov. 21 stating it "found your policy of discrimination against Negroes un- democratic and a breach of statutes of the State of Michigan." This letter shows IRA went into the squabble with a chip on its shoulder. Fur- thermore, though it demanded a meeting to settle things by Dec. 1, IRA launched its propaganda barrage one day after the bar- bers had received the letter. Some of IRA's questionable actions in- clude quoting only half of Prof. Parker's statement in their handbills and asking peo- ple to pack The Daily's letters column with letters supporting IRA. The editorial entitled "Which Side" un- lnowingly summed up IRA's trouble in Tuesday's Daily. "You and I are on the spot," it said. "We are being asked to stand and be counted on the issue of Jim Crowism in Ann Arbor." When IRA stops trying to pin people against the wall and 'be counted," when they stop trying to count their own gains and devote their energies to conversions by reason and persuasion, constructive progress will be made toward eliminating discrimination. The picket lines are out. Refusing to cross them is not a true vote for anti-discrimina- tion, it is only a vote for a minority group which is trying to be successful as others have been before it--in passing itself off to the public as the voice of the student body of the University. _111 --iiM U.Ac " f.. II iority Control I WOUI lE HAD to find another co- lege campus in t he country so tightly controlled by a small miinority of the student body. About 15 per cent of the undergraduate students run this campus. They are led by the Inter-fraternity Council and the Pan- Hellenic Association. In short ,tIhey are thA affilited students. liw do they manage it? They merely capitalize upon the apathy of the rest of the student body. They swamp the polls with carefully - instructed voters. , They flood extra-curricular activities with try- outs. In many colleges, particularly in the East, it is almost necessary to belong to a fra- ternity or sorority in order to obtain any important campus position because the majority of the student body i affiliated. Here the affiliated students are a small minority-but the independents haven't heard about it yet. The Michigan independent hides when M'D RATHER BE RIGHT: Chugging Along By SAMUEL GRAFTON IN RE SAVING DEMOCRACY in France and Italy, it seems to me that we are chugging majestically along the track about six months too late. We have no notion that we are late, of course, as we gravely debate how much aid we are going to send to Eu- rope, and when. We have all the airs and graces, and the stately consequential man- ner, of beings who are convinced that they are shaping the future of the world. We are sure our least word is of great importance, our smallest action of immense significance. We know we matter; that is the first article in the credo of our national egoism. But the startling truth may be that, so far as events now unrolling in France and Italy are concerned, we do not matter at all. We may already have lost our chance to matter, and are perhaps only chopping air and and writing belated and confused foot- notes to swift events. It is going that rapidly. The Commu- ists of France and Italy possess the reality of on-the-scene power, of a kind hard to counter from the outside with either spit- balls or lollypops. They can call a strike, settle it, and then call another while the rejoicing at the end of the first is still going on. They can manage their power with executive skil and strategic grace, making sure that no coal is dug while trains are running, and that no trains run when coal is being dug. They can palayze the middle millions into endless metaphysical discussion, while they push France and Italy on toward accepting a new way of life for a century in the be- lief that they are only solving spot prob- lem of the moment, concerning wages and the price of bread. They have the goods on part of the opposition, in the shape of bad records; almost a whole generation of French conservatism has rendered itself hors de combat by past evil and silliness. It is against this process, wild and galvanic, that we are opposing our puffy current debate on how much to help Europe, and for what reasons, and when. Why is it so hard for us to help those great majorities in France and Italy which obviously do not want Communism? Why do we wheeze along so very late? I have thought of, and discarded, many reasons which might accountfor our curious power- lessness. The controlling one, it seems to me, is a certain cynical something in our approach to postwar problems, which has, I am afraid, communicated itself to the world. Our dillydallying with European relief; our in-again-out-again approach to it; our present return to it, not because we suddenly fell in love again with European democracy, but because we became scared of Russia; our own swing to the right, and the stories which have crossed the ocean about our own growing unconcern about social problems-all these, I think, have hurt. Nor is the cry, "Quicker!" to Congress the complete answer. We might still save freedom in Western Europe, but it is not quicker aid alone that we need; it is some- thing bigger, as well as something quicker, that is required, a blazing American demon- stration that we love democrats very much, and are with them to the end, without counting, and through no matter what- scheduled events. As to how one goes about explaining this to the present Congress, I have ne idea. (Copyright, 1947, New York Post Syndicate) Picketing CRITICS OF "OPERATION HAIRCUT" intimate that picketing does not some- how befit the dignity of University students. Restraint, they caution. So completely have academic tracts and lectures saturated their brains that they fail to see in public dem- onstrations the most potent educational me- dium at their command. The Inter-Racial Association, as Daily readers are well aware, has long conducted an educational program of lectures, motion pictures and discussions rivaled by few other campus organizations. The Ann Arbor Bar- ber's Association has obviously been un- affected by these mediums. More dynamic techniques are therefore imperative. If 1 t A critics na unable to rise to the the ballots are being east. te ducks when the tryout calls are issued. Sometimes he growls about being "unrepresented." More often he sleeps it off. A casual glance shows the results: Affiliated students swept 78 per cent of the nine offices in last week's engineering class elections. Affiliated students won all four of the senior positions in the literary college this fall. The total vote was 378. Affiliated students also hold 100 per cent of the nine posts on the J-Hop Committee this year. There were 758 votes cast. Affiliated students captured 50 per cent of the ten-member Soph Prom Committee this fall. The vote totalled 574. By way of contrast, only one of the three new student members of the Board in Con- trol of Student Publications is affiliated. The vote was 2,340. But the 37-member Student Legislature, campus governing body, is 65 per cent affiliated. Exactly 3,065 students, repre- senting about 16 per cent of the student body, voted last spring. We are not blind enough to believe that a true cross-section of the student body voted in these elections, nor are we naive enough to believe that candidates were se- lected solely on the basis of "ability and in- terest." It was simply a rout engineered by the well-organized Greeks. And the unsuc- cessful independent candidates can thank their lethargic supporters. But this isn't the whole story. Affiliated students hold 73 per cent of the 11 positions on the Union Executive Council. Affiliated students hold 86 per cent of the seven positions on the League Council. And affiliated students make up 54 per cent of the 13 senior editors of The Daily. All these are appointive positions. The percentages merely reflect widespread drowsiness. Obviously, if it were not for Pan- hel and the IFC most of the large campus organizations would fall apart. Every now and then a handful of inde- pendents set out to wake up the campus. They know they have about 85 per cent of the student body to draw upon for extra-curricular activities. They realize that the combined vote of the East and West Quadrangles would match the entire Greek-letter vote. It's pure mathematics. And that is what Assembly and the newly-formed Association of Independent Men are counting on. But they need the interest and cooperation of Michigan's 15,000 day-dreamers. -John Campbell. IN VIEW OF the refusal of the Republican- dominated 80th Congress to enact Pres- ident Truman's anti-inflation program, vot- ers of America should have no difficulty in placing responsibility for our runaway in- flation. When the 1948 presidential and congres- sional elections roll around, they will recall that it was a Republican-controlled Senate and House of Representatives which also swept away the last vestiges of OPA while loudly proclaiming the capacity of private enterprise to lower prices. And they will remember that while American industry reaped the greatest profit in the entire history of the nation, figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the cost of living revealed that it failed miserably to fulfill its pledge to the American people. In September the BLS recently reported the cost-of-living index soared to a new high of 66.1 per cent above the August, 1939 levels. This index was 12.3 per cent higher than a year ago and 22.9 above June, 1946 when the GOP scrapped the final re- mains of price control. Translated into dollars and cents, this figure means that American consumers are now forced to pay $1.23 for goods and serv- ices that cost them $1.00, 15 months ago, because the Republican Party succumbed to the call of big business interests. Furthermore, between June, 1946 and Sept. 15, 1947, food prices rose 39.8 per cent and brought the food index to 203.5 per cent above the 1935-39 average. This was 10 per cent above the June, 1920 peak after World War I, an infla- tionary catastrophe that the GOP loudly declared it could save us from, if.indus- try was afforded the opportunity to op- erate in a free and unregulated economy. Slowly and inexorably, American con- sumer-voters are becoming aware that they have been misled and duped by the GOP and its monopoly-minded supporters in in- dustry. They have been fooled before, but if prices continue to spiral upward while cap- ital gorges itself on profits, there is a good chance that the voters of this nation will answer with a thunderous "YES" next No- vember, when the Democratic Party asks them whether they have "Had more than enough" of the Republican Party. --Joe Frein. p ~ --' i \ l O' Vo R ' y Is 3 . - - - ---, LetIt r1 to the Eitor ... -11 mowam~ EDITOR' S NOTE: Recalse The D:ily prints every letter to the editor re- ceived (liiCh is signed, 300 words or less in length, and in good taste) we remind our readers that the views rxlre 'e"d in letters are thiose of the Writers only. Letters of more than 31)0 words :ire shortened. printed or onitted at the discretion of the edi- torial director. To the Edilitor: ST IS MY BELIEF that sociolo- g2umis cnar e on)ll a trci- a bl me mhod of chlmina ins race fluirt- idia to be the eimin)t ion of r ietial ecoomic aid politi- cal vi,(%,i - Edcato a con- eivad tolay and its corollary met hos ar i-c onl supplementary Residetil seg-gao ms abi shed, and so must be the rei cl voice, Oceipaionii oppotut- v y and public part icipan. Foi these reasons, the climina- ion of segregation as een in th hk particular aim of t he cur~ rent "Operation Haircut") is oh. iously a strong. Concrete stel) in- I he rigiht Iirecti On. he- s1t p'. \ ill ma ca knuckling to t hemver. 01 gawi dmisrimination n ou society which breeds pre- dice and ives a moral base to t he acIets. Are we going to ad- m 1thit('he majority of us ap- pmrmte ot te barb1r'. ,-tald that In MI-11th aior1_it11y . obarber 1101)p )pat I i<