Everybody's Business

Sir:

The state of this nation, including the recession, is the result of decisions that are made "after breakfast," "after lunch," "after a smoke," "after a while," and now "after golf." We have become a nation of "afters."

JOHN J. KONALIE

Middletown, Pa.

Sir:

So the top labor leaders are telling our President what to do about the recession. Did any of them tell him that one reason for this recession is that their own unions, plus federal taxes, have forced prices up so high that a lot of us cannot purchase all the things we would like?

GEORGE H. ELLIS

Butte, Mont.

Sir:

Common sense indicates that the causes of the present economic recession are a combination of actions taken by big business.

RONALD E. PAXTON

Oak Park, Mich.

Sir:

The cause of the recession is automation and speedup in manufacturing processes. When an item can be made in half the time it formerly took, then men will be out of work six months out of the year.

FRED R. ISENHART

Mount Morris, Ill.

Sir:

Our high-powered, sweptwing, chrome-plated economy gets about the same mileage as Detroit's best. Both need frequent adjustments, which are costly, perhaps because they are products of people who have forgotten what constitutes a day's work.

PETER G. PIERCE

Manchester, N.H.

Sir:

Four million workers get automatic increases in 1958 (escalator clauses). It is like overfeeding a patient who has boils.

WALTER G. BOWERMAN

New York City

Sir:

I thought the situation was hopeless until I read: "Tax reduction is a rather irrevocable step. Once taxes are reduced, it will be difficult to raise them again." Let's proceed with tax reduction immediately.

F. R. HARRIS

Greenfield, Ohio

Sir:

The President is probably winning as great a battle for the U.S. and the free world as any he ever conducted as an Army commander. By resisting the pressure for ill-conceived spending or "free" money programs, he and his advisers are likely to ride out this recession storm for us.

BROOKER L. MASTERS

Birmingham, Mich.

Sir:

The March 24 cover was beautifully done and quite symbolic. It recalls for many of us here Bernard Lorjou's The Dying Bull, [see cut]. The original painting hangs directly opposite the desk of our senior partner, who finds it an ever-present reminder that no "sacred cows" or immortal bulls roam Wall Street. As Baron Rothschild put it: "Fortunes are made by buying low and selling too soon."

EDSON GOULD

Arthur Wiesenberger & Co.

New York City

Judgment in Ohio

Sir:

The Amishmen and their wives who went to jail in Ohio for the crime of refusing to let their progeny be placed in a children's home [March 24] are in good company, religiously and historically. The Apostles Paul, Peter, John--and the Lord Jesus Christ--were arrested because of the clashing claims of Caesar and God; but that will not excuse the Pilates, Neros and Judge Don Youngs. Justice is often sorely defeated by a rigid adherence to the letter of the law.

HORACE H. MOHLER

Dayton

Sir:

The one-room schoolhouse never produced the switchblade-carrying terrorist and rapist that our sprawling, highly organized schools turn out today. The one-room schoolhouse is passing and with it other old-fashioned characteristics of America.

RITA M. ALBEE

Boston

Below Poor

Sir:

Jack Paar did a favor for NBC by ridding it of Dody Goodman [March 24]. Now, why can't NBC get rid of Jack Paar?

JOHN J. OVERLANDER

Northfield, N.J.

Sir:

He is of interest to many only as someone who is so disgusting that there is a fascination in waiting for the next blunder that will erupt from the irascible Mr. Paar.

ROSE E. BOLLMAN

Lebanon, Pa.

Sir:

Does Paar consider himself bright, shrewd and calculating when he raises his guest's dress to see if she is wearing knee socks and peers down her dress to find out if she has notes?

D. ATKINSON

New York City

Sir:

Hurrah for King Paar for finally guillotining the most ill-mannered, untalented old maid ever shoved down a TV audience's throat.

MRS. FRANK BERTUCCI

Milwaukee

Strike in Sheboygan

Sir:

Herbert Kohler owns the company; surely he should be the one to decide whether he wants an open or closed shop. As a near neighbor of the Kohler village, I say he has been most fair. The U.A.W. can not say that.

MRS. CHARLES B. DREWRY

Plymouth, Wis.

Sir:

After reading your March 17 article, I can assure you, in any house that I shall ever build I shall certainly demand that all my plumbing fixtures be Kohler.

PHILIP G. ROBERTS

Oklahoma City

Sir:

Bravo to Herbert V. Kohler and his stand against Reuther and his U.A.W. They've got completely out of hand; most of our internal problems, including recessions, are directly traceable to the bad aspects of unionism.

GREGORY CONTAS

West Hartland, Conn.

Receding Shadow?

Sir:

"The Long Shadow of John Dewey" is the most concise and comprehensive statement on U.S. education since Sputnik. Could it not be that a hierarchy of educationists has distorted and stretched Dewey's shadow to a shape and length he himself never intended?

A plague on "life adjustment" and a double vodka on the rocks to TIME [March 31] for printing it.

F. JOSEPH LORZ

Cleveland Heights, Ohio

Sir:

I strenuously object to your undocumented attack on the public school curriculum.

JOSEPH I. HALL

Oregon State Department of Education Salem, Ore.

Sir:

As a teacher, I have long noted the increasing anti-intellectualism in our schools. The products of the teachers' colleges, who have entrenched themselves in positions of authority in every state, are, for the most part, intellectually inert themselves, know little or nothing about subject matter, and what is worse, contend openly and brazenly that knowledge of subject is of secondary importance.

S. J. LEWIS JR.

Augusta, Ga.

School & Skis

Sir:

Re your March 24 "School & Skis" in Aspen, Colo.: now that intellectualism is back in style, there are probably many school systems anxious to pay lip service to scholastic standards, but quick to provide loopholes as was done at Aspen. Our congratulations to ex-Superintendent Speer, whose efforts to maintain classroom standards were defeated by the even higher standards of the ski range.

RICHARD ROSE

Euclid, Ohio

Sir:

It appears one of the best girl skiers in the U.S. was almost barred from her sport for poor grades. How silly can a school superintendent get? My 15-year-old daughter was directly behind Chairman Pecjak's daughter at the National Junior championships. I also am a member of a school board. Lessons are important, but when you have girls that can go like ours--skiing comes first.

CHARLES G. BENNETT

St. Regis, Mont.

Sir:

Mr. Pecjak (and I, a school teacher, have seen many like him) is another soft, liberal-minded parent who needs to be a big shot and can only succeed through a daughter.

MARILYN E. HOS

Chicago

The Senator from Texas

Sir:

It was touching to confirm that Senator "Laddy Bird" Johnson is sensitive and vain. He can really dish it out, but like all demagogues, he can't take it.

LESLIE B. GRAY

Reno

Sir:

Mr. Johnson won the Texas senatorial race by 87 votes. These votes occurred in a district ruled by George Parr--the Duke of Duval County and a most shady character.

VIOLET KIRK-SWAIN

San Antonio

Sir:

Since LBJ's secretary completed the telephone assignment in three minutes instead of ten [March 17], she should be entitled to a raise. I am a secretary, and although entirely dependent upon my salary, I would have given my resignation to LBJ quicker than he could have picked up his tiny gold pillbox, perhaps thereby giving Lady Bird the opportunity to peck away at my typewriter and chirp LBJ's demands into the ears of the switchboard operators. Did his daddy never teach him the meaning of courtesy?

MARCELLA COLLINS

New York City

Well-Wheeled

Sir:

In your excellent article on the Ecole de Paris [March 24] you are at pains to mention that painters Mathieu and Buffet both own Rolls-Royces--the point presumably being that some contemporary art pays off handsomely. But while you mention that Poliakoff is a gypsy, you forgot to add that he is a gypsy whose caravan is also a sumptuous Rolls, driven by a liveried chauffeur. Art apparently pays Poliakoff, too.

ROSALIND CONSTABLE

New York City

P: I For well-wheeled Modernist Poliakoff and caravan, see cut.--ED.

Tolerating Intolerance

Sir:

The readers whose letters you printed [March 31] were indignant over the Pope's indignation. One of them stated: "I do not believe the founder of Christianity established any church for this purpose (slander and coercion)." And yet this was the same Founder who called the scribes and Pharisees hypocrites and whited sepulchres (slander?) and who used coercion in driving the moneychangers from His Father's house.

E. C. FERLITA, S.J.

New Orleans

Sir:

I hope that TIME never discontinues its Letters column. Freedom-loving Protestants who preach tolerance and then open their mouths--proving what bigoted people they really are--always give me a chuckle.

D. F. HINDS

St. Louis

Daughters under the Skin

Sir:

As a native-born American, I am ashamed of the Daughters of the American Revolution's denial of its good-citizenship award to a German girl residing in the U.S. merely because she happens to be an alien. Our independence was established by the unselfish heroism of such men as Lafayette and Kosciusko, who did not hesitate to fight lor this country even though they were not citizens of it.

PORTER RISLEY

Austin, Texas

Sir:

Every year the D.A.R.s come oozing into this town, undertipping, festooning themselves with large purple orchids, making all sorts of decrees. Why can't they behave like colonial dames instead of revolutionary broads?

ELIZABETH L. STIRLING

Washington, D.C.

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