Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one” - A.J. Liebling
My father Bob Wilson took this to heart, and bought one and started his own newspaper, the Prairie Post of Maroa, Illinois in 1958, and ran it until he died in 1972. It never had a circulation of more than 2500 or so, but every week, he would fire off editorials at everyone and everything from local events to the actions of the nations of the world.
He may have been a Quaker peace activist in a Republican district, but his love and support of the farming communities garnered him enough respect that he eventually ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1962, though he lost. (He might have tried again, had he not died of an accident while only 49.) Many of his views ring true today. And he might have been willing to change the ones that fell behind the times. Although raised in the casual racism of the 1920s and 1930s, at the age of 15 he took stock of what he was being taught and discarded much of it as being wrong, and lived his life with respect for all.
I decided to transcribe his old editorials (I may make a book for some of my relatives) and every once in a while I will repost one here, as a view of how the world has changed wildly, or remained stubbornly the same.
July 25, 1963
NO COST TO YOU
The press and the public taste to which it panders is a curious thing. Acres of space have been given to the activities of Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies. In defense of America, we want to say that any sizable high school in the nation can offer several young things who are their equal in every way but in their mercenary attitude.
While millions of frustrated readers drool over the revelations of these teenage terrors and their overage playboys, almost no-one mentions the anniversary of an even more efficient method of getting money out of a mattress.
Just thirty years ago, this nation took a bold step which brought savings out of the sock and from under the mattress and put them back in the banks where they can contribute to the nation's prosperity.
Back in 1929, we had pretty pure free-enterprise Capitalism, and you recall what happened. In 1931, 2,293 banks failed; the following year, 1,453. Thousands more would have collapsed if Franklin D. Roosevelt had not closed the banks to reassess the situation and shore up the weak points.
When he proposed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the remaining bankers raised a howl about “Socialism”. Today, bankers point with pride to the FDIC emblem on their letterheads which demonstrates that money deposited with them is insured by the Federal Government. (Originally for $5,000 per depositor, it is now $10,000, and higher limits are being discussed.)
Young people today with no memory of bank “runs” or panics, use banking facilities as casually as they use a phone booth or a grocery store.
The FDIC is a prime example of “Socialistic” government interference in business, which you are so often told costs you money through taxes. Interestingly, there was never a nickel of tax money appropriated for the FDIC! It started operations with a business loan from the Treasury, which it long ago repaid with interest. Like the REA and the TVA, it stands on its own feet and pays its own way.
The original act permits FDIC to charge member banks up to one-twelfth of one percent yearly on their deposits in order to insure them. By now this rate has been cut back to one thirty-second, and still the FDIC continues to pile up reserves, which it invests in United States Savings Bonds. Its total resources now total more than five billion dollars!
In thirty years the FDIC has paid out around $360 million to investors in failed banks, and all by $22 million of this was eventually recovered from the assets of those banks.
Recently this government agency celebrated its thirtieth anniversary by dedicating in Washington a new $6 million dollar headquarters building. Built with tax money? Wrong again; your neighborhood banker paid for it with the insurance he is required to buy, at no cost to you, on your deposits with him.
August 1, 1963
THE ENDLESS BATTLEFIELD
The plate glass window in front of the store was broken; there was no doubt about that. The police were discussing it with shopkeepers on the street, while the man who did it sat quietly in the police car where he had been directed to sit.
He will never see this, any more than he saw the window when it was pointed out to him. All he sees is an endless battlefield stretching from somewhere in the South Pacific, through what vermin-eaten swamps and merciless fire we do not know, into a Japanese prison camp and later into American hospitals.
He walks the battlefield carefully, stepping over cracks in the sidewalk which might conceal land mines. He goes through the rubbish boxes with great care, gathering all the live matches left in discarded match folders and burning them neatly on the sidewalk.
The greatest menace is live hand grenades, and the only agitation he shows is when once in awhile he discovers an object that resembles one, such as a Coke bottle. The other day it was a rock which looked a little like a grenade. He leaped on it, and flung it far away where it could explode out of harm's way. The imaginary grenade bounced across the street into a real shop window.
No doubt the merchant's glass insurance policy cared for the loss. The officers conferred with him, and then with headquarters. “He never hurts anyone”, commented one of the businessmen. “We don't know what he's been through. If the government pays his pension, and once in awhile a little damage such as this, it is pretty poor pay for what they asked of him.”
It was a war he never chose and did not want. He went because he was told to, and could not offer a better way of solving or preventing conflict. He endured as much as he was able, and finally lost his grip on a reality grown too dreadful to comprehend. Remember him when you consider whether peace can be attained, whether it is worth seeking, whether despite difficulties the building of a peaceful world is not better than eternal reliance on more and more dangerous weapons of destruction.
After awhile the officers came out to the car, and one of them spoke to the soldier earnestly and gently, as you might to a child. “You threw a rock and broke that window. Don't do it again.” Then he opened the door, and the little cluster of citizens of the sidewalk stood by almost reverently as the man they sent to World War II, who never really came back, shuffled off down the street, stepping carefully over the cracks in the sidewalk.