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Sterling Weakness And Common Mart By HERBERT BRATTER Contributing Writer Behind the British government’s decision to apply for membership In the European Common Market, a momentous step, is the chronic weakness of the pound sterling, long a “key currency” in world business. Sterling’s weakness in turn reflects the great changes, political as well as economic, which have affected this impor tant nation in the last two dec ades: The war, the postwar bur dens, the breakup of the Empire and the deterioration of the country’s competitive position in world trade. In 1949 the pound was devalued. Last year Britain had to obtain substantial help from the International Monetary Fund for sterling: $1.5 billion in American and other currencies, plus a SSOO million standby credit. This was the second time that the fund had extended massive assistance to the pound. Since World War 11, Britain has undergone re peated balance-of-payments crises and has had billions of dollars of direct United States aid—“inter im aid,” the Marshall Plan, and particularly the $4 billion "British Loan” of 1945, which was so quickly dissipated to support the pound at its then parity. Britain’s payments position has deteriorated for various reasons, some beyond its control. Income from shipping has been reduced by foreign competition. Oil reve nues from abroad have diminished. Overseas aid and defense spending has been burdensome, especially in Germany. And Britain’s com petitiveness in world trade has steadily diminished, even while British exports in the aggregate have increased. In four years through 1960 British exports rose only 11 per cent, whereas West Ger many’s rose 55 per cent. Britain’s share in world exports of manu factures went from 22 per cent in 1956 to 19 per cent in 1960, while the European Common Market’s share rose from 42 per cent to 49 per cent. Exports Losing Out Even in the sterling area, where tariff and other preferences give British goods an advantage, British exports have been losing out to German, French, Italian and other Common Market export ers. The UKs share of imports of other sterling-area countries de clined in four years from 55 per cent to 46 per cent while the share supplied by the six Common Mar ket countries rose from 21 per cent to 23 per cent. The protected British domestic market itself has had to meet import competition to some degree. Why has British competitive ness decreased? One reason is that population growth has lagged behind the rate on the Continent. There have been more workers to compete with the British. Since there was more war de struction in Europe than in Brit ain, after war there was more reconstruction and modernization on the Continent, much of it done with Marshall Plan dollars and technical aid. This reduced Euro pean production costs, compared to the British. A major handicap for Britain has been the much more aggres sive policies of British organized labor, assisted for many years by the Labor government, than those of Continental labor. High British taxes have in creased the burdens on British export industries. Competitive Markets High costs, generated by the wage-price spiral and by high taxes, have tended to price British goods out of competitive markets. The Organization for European Economic Co-operation in a recent report pointed an accusing finger at British wage policies. Another explanation: British Industry all too generally has failed to roll up its sleeves and go out after export business, despite appeals by the government and official export credit insurance. The protected home market was just too good: and the preferential Commonwealth markets required less selling effort. But markets in the sterling area, including Can ada—and also in the United States while growing, have grown less fast than European markets. By not catering to the latter, Britain has lost trade posi tion. Since summer the Government has put on a strong export drive to W/iat Is Happiness? What, then is happiness? I find only one tenable formula: Happi ness is the wealth of a reality transfused into inwardness. But why seek new formulae when the formula has already been pro nounced long ago, a formula whose truth thunders through the ages: "The Kingdom of Heaven is in yourselves!” The realistic outlook digs for the treasure in the wrong place. Its capitalist side, by virtue of its sterile ideal of work, accumulates surplus value, that is, potential happiness, not in order to enjoy it, but in order to let it continue to work for the purpose of new accumu lation. How true is the humorous chain of words concerning the parsimonious testator: “The father denies himself so that his son shall deny himself, so that his grandson shall also deny him self, etc.” On the other side we hear communism’s conception of hap piness: Perfect material harmony by sacrificing the spiritual in dividual and his metaphysical conditions. Both forget that hu man spirituality may be sup pressed perhaps for decades, but not forever. Both forget that the Kingdom of Heaven and the chance of salvation lie only within ourselves. Both forget that stir British industry out of its complacency. And it has imposed an economic belt-tightening pro gram to both hold prices steady and direct business eyes abroad. British business has been told bluntly to pull up its socks. “Ex port and grow” is offered as a slogan. It won’t be easy, though. The British press is full of ex amples of the difficulties to be overcome, “Why should I go out on a limb and tool up for a production I am not sure I can sell?” asks a Wolverhampton businessman. “It would require more overhead, more employes and probably mean no more income in the end. My business provides a good living for me and my son.” Lack of Adaption In Denmark a British reporter learned some other reasons why British exports are losing out: Fail ure to observe delivery dates; un willingness to adapt products to the Danish market as the Ger mans do. perhaps because the British products are salable else where without change; neglecting to answer letters; failure to keep delivery dates. So European cars have displaced British in Den mark. And in Sweden. In 1950 Britain supplied 37 per cent of car im ports, Germany 28 per cent. In 1959 Britain sold 12 per cent, Germany 48 per cent. In 1960 Britain’s share slipped more. Swiss importers complain of the British take-it-or-leave-it atti tude: refusal to quote c.i.f. (cost, insurance and freight); quotation in nonmetric measurements; arbi trary prices; preferential treat ment of the home market, insist ence on the use of English in cor respondence. Department stores in the United States, Australia and elsewhere complain of six months delays in getting British pottery, and up to nine months on woolens and wor steds. British machinery manufactur ers have successfully opposed ex ports of machinery to Common wealth countries, lest it be used to compete with British makers of consumer goods. Not long ago It was the official policy of the British steel industry and British Government to limit steel exports. Shortage of Capacity has con tinued to limit exports anyway, especially of newer types of steel. Some New Businesses The old British chemical in dustry, which grew up under pro tection, is high-cost and not anx ious to develop new export mark ets. Newer segments like petro chemicals, however, are reportedly as efficient as any in Europe. Yet they supply only 0.1 per cent of the continent’s consumption. British industry hesitates to in vest in added capacity. It would rather risk a short supply than excess capacity. “We haven’t the guts to put up a large enough plant,” one manufacturer con fesses. Conditions blamed for Britain’s export lag also include: “fantastic paperwork”: low salaries of ex port managers; deficient export organization; poor selling techni ques; insensitivity to conditions in export markets. But, according to the Financial Times, the root cause of Britain’s economic troubles is tariff pro tection; hence suggested tariff reductions by Britain may be worthwhile without corresponding concessions from others. Now the Macmillan government has decided to subject the British home market, as well as Britain’s export trade, to competition such as this generation’s businessmen have never experienced. Reginald Maulding, M. P„ head of the board of trade in the cabinet, advises British business to stop looking for the safe home market and begin to think “in terms of one single market, with competi tion fierce at home as well as abroad, but with opportunities abroad as well as at home for expansion and good profits for hard work and sustained efforts.” He adds: “Protection can be too high to be healthy.” The government, moreover, having frozen the pay of the civil service, seeks to extend the wage pause to millions of other workers. To get British labor to swallow this far from pleasant pill is not easy. Those affected seethe with indignation. For Britain’s union with the common market only the bans have been published. The nuptials may prove troubled and prolonged. happiness is spirit. The realistic outlook and the belief in things is a false and. in an all-human sense, heretical ideal, and as such more dangerous than cancer, more contagious than spotted typhus, and more stupefying to the brain than paresis. However, false ideals cannot be shattered by criticism, Right ideals must take up the battle against them. The fateful question of our civilization is whether the spiritual outlook, which still lives in scattered places, is strong enough to op pose the realistic outlook.—Franz Werfel in Between Heaven and Earth. ** * * Love, though in a sense it may be admitted to be stronger than death, is by no means so universal and so sure. In fact, love is rare —the love of men, of things, of ideas, the love of perfected skill. For love is the enemy of haste; it takes count of passing days, of men who pass away, of a fine art matured slowly in the course of years and doomed in a short time to pass away too, and be no more. Love and regret go hand in hand in this world of changes swifter than the shifting of the clouds re flected in the mirror of the sea.— Joseph Conrad in The Mirror of the Sea. J| REPRESENTATIVE PURCELL —Star Staff Photo by Arnold Sacha At his new desk in the House Office Building A New Congressman From Texas Has Some Ideas on Juveniles By JOHN McKELWAY Star Staff Writer It is generally accepted in most circles that things are just differ ent in Texas. One of the most recent examples occurred two Saturdays ago when the people of the State’s 13th dis trict (which lies below the Okla homa line) elected to Congress a judge who had picked up a repu tation by sentencing juvenile de linquents to the barber’s chair. Such a practice—in most circles at least—would be considered po litical suicide. But Graham B. Purcell, jr„ 42, the judge and a Democrat, won by 10,000 votes over a conservative Republican businessman from Wichita Falls, home town of the even more con servative and the first Republican Senator to arrive from the Con federate States since the Civil War—John Tower. The election was held to fill a vacancy, created when former Democratic Representative Frank Ikard, a soft-spoken but highly regarded Congressman, left his native land to take up duties here as executive vice president of the American Petroleum Institute. Representative Purcell, sworn in last Monday as a member of Con gress, did not give exactly the impression he was the only law west or east of the Pecos wherever it might be. He wore a red carnation in his lapel and was quite solemn. The Freshman Feeling By his third day in office he sat in a rather bare office and ad mitted he was thoroughly con fused by the ritual on the floor of the House. “The last time I felt this way,” he said sadly, “was during that first week at college.” The condition is not expected to last too long. He’s been living with the Vice President, another Texan and a former teacher. Mr. Purcell, a father of four, is slender and tall without boots and he has a fine pair of cold blue eyes. He has that rich, low Texan voice that can be turned to good advantage. He could easily be mistaken for a cattle or oil baron or at least a cowboy who smokes rugged cigarettes. Actually, the new Congressman grew up on a farm of only 500 acres which in Texas is so small its considered a “stock farm” and not a ranch. He does not drink and smokes only an occasional cigar—which he goes at with much satisfaction. Headline Victim In his current bewilderment, Mr. Purcell seemed relieved to talk of home and his reputation as a judge—and those delinquents he had sent to the chair. He credits a headline writer on a newspaper in Wichita Falls with getting his name circulated by writing over a two-inch story on page 1: “Judge Sentences Youth to Chair.” The story was probably of suf ficient length, although it did note a change in the local approach to delinquency problems in Wichita County. For Judge Purcell had ordered a youngster, up before him on charges of theft, to have his duck tailed haircut removed —in a bar ber’s chair if necessary—before he would even conduct a hearing in the case. “That hair,” the former judge recalled the other day, "had been down around those ears for so long there was a white streak run ning around his head when they cut it off.” To many in the Far East this probably sounded like brutal treat ment—for the story was distrib uted nationally. But the people of Wichita—u not its youngsters —liked the idea. And the judge, sensing accept ance. improved on the approach as he went along. "Down home,” he said, “the kids were wearing their blue jeans half off. But if they came in my court, I told ’em to get themselves a belt and wear it where God meant it to go. I ruled out those black leather motorcycle jackets and made ’em get a jacket and a tie— if they could afford a tie.” The road to the often frustrat ing job of dealing with juveniles was a long one for Mr. Purcell. After attending public schools in and around Archer City—popu lation, 2,ooo—he set out for Texas A&M, picking up a degree just before World War II in animal husbandry. During the war, he was an in fantry officer and fought through Tunisia and up through Italy. He came out a major in 1946. Back home, he attempted to talk a younger brother into the prac tice of law. He convinced him self, instead, and was off to Bay lor, graduating there in 1949. A District Judge For two years he practiced in Big Spring and then moved to Wichita Falls in 1951. By 1955, he had been appointed to the bench as a District Judge and in Texas they handle everything from mur der to joy riding. He immediately made his mark in his handling of juvenile cases. Besides haircuts—he also ruled out boots for those who spent their young lives some distance from the nearest steer—he began trying to instill responsibility. Not only did the teen-agers of the county begin to feel and re spect a new toughness but par ents found themselves thoroughly involved. “If I placed a kid on proba tion,” Mr. Purcell drawled, in a matter-of-fact tone, “he would have to agree he could only go to school or church without his par ents. Any place else he went he had to be accompanied by his mother or father. “I had them sign a statement. And they signed practically in blood and it was a solemn thing,” Judge Purcell said with a flicker of a smile. The “trial” or hearing was con ducted in the somber atmosphere of a very high court. It was never on a chat basis, in the judge’s chambers or on the same level in the court. When some boys were caught at the traditional practice of bust ing school windows, “I had the boys and their daddies fix the damage,” Mr. Purcell said. The Airmen's Case After a gang had “jumped” some airmen at a nearly base and were arrested, he gave the boys 30 minutes to get from school to the court. For weeks, every after noon, they studied in a room at the courthouse. Their parents had to come and pick them up around 5:30 p.m. “The first time the boys came down,” Mr. Purcell said, “the whole school followed them down. They stood around outside the court and yelled and the boys hung out the windows. They were heroes. "Well. I had the bailiff go out side and bring every one of those kids inside the court. We took their names down and I told them if we caught them around the court again they could come in and study. And I told them if they ever went into the service they were going to be in a strange place someday and maybe they wouldn’t like it so much if a gang jumped them. They never tame back.” If a youngster was picked up for stealing, the judge ordered him to go to work and pay it all back—and it was the judge who often got the job for the boy. He had his troubles. He failed to get a bill through the Texas Legislature which would have given him power to waive a ju venile under 17 to adult court, in cases of a serious offense. To get around that, he explained in criti cism of Texas law. Texas judges often have to merely wait until a jailed juvenile has a birthday THE SUNDAY STAR Woi/iington, D. C„ Ftbruary 4,1962 and can then be turned over to the grand jury. He was also un able to get a separate juvenile court for his county. Failure of Bill But the community, apparently, accepted his methods—as the vote in his last election indicates. In non-support cases, he de manded cash payments by delin quent fathers. “A juvenile judge,” the Texan said, “has got to be fair and con sistent. You can’t play favorites and you’ve got to work like hell. You’ve got to teach children to respect authority and accept re sponsibility. “It’s their job to fit into the community and not the com munity’s job to accept them,” the Congressman said. Mr. Purcell is not about to claim his methods would work elsewhere —in a big city situation where the number of cases are overwhelm ing. He does feel he accomplished something in Wichita. World-Wide Snail Fever Menace By TRUMAN R. TEMPLE Star Staff Writer While the world’s two most powerful nations are racing for the moon mankind is losing another race to the lowly snail. The explanation of this paradox is an ancient disease called snail fever. Carried by the tiny animals in fresh-water streams and ponds, the malady is spreading at an alarming rate around the globe, helped ironically by modern ir rigation methods. It is painful, often fatal, and includes millions of children among its victims. More than half the people of Egypt suffer from the disease, technically known as schistoso miasis or Bilharziasis (after Dr. Theodore Bilharz, who discovered a drug for it a century ago.» Among Southern Rhodesia's 2.5 million population, 1 million have snail fever. The disease plagues most of Africa, much of Latin America, and occurs in semi tropical regions around the rest of the world. 200 Million Affected There is no sure way of know ing how many humans are vic tims of the parasitic disease but estimates range up to 200 million. The University of Michigan’s Memorial Phoenix Project, at tacking the problem with cobalt -60 experiments, has termed it the top candidate for title of “the world’s worst health problem.” One of the grave worries of United States health experts is C/ 4. /u ’"<>-®MSp ■ • w • W <'|| " ißj \ n?/jHBk > I ±s HB ■ u. 1R a i*< w 4^r . By >• El -2- x< ' : mM I wMHHI ■ Health worker explaining to Brazilian natives how some snails spread dreaded fever. Udall Moves Quickly On Parks Proposal By CHARLES BARTLETT Contributing Writer A major crusade with deep im plications for future city dwellers is touched off by publication last week of the study on outdoor recreation in America by the Lau rance Rockefeller Commission. The point of the study is con tained in its account of the con ception and development of Cen tral Park, the one restful and soul filling feature of Manhattan Island. The city had only developed as far as Twenty-third street in the 1850 s when Editor William Cul len Bryant of the Evening Post began urging the acquisition of park land. The area north of Twenty-third street was country but in the populated end of the island the Inhabitants were obliged to have their picnics and play their games in cemeteries. The proposal by Bryant to have New York buy about 700 acres of rocky expanse in the center of the island for use as a park gained popular momentum and the ac quisition was made, the swamps were turned into ponds, and the gentle hills became a playground that has served millions of ur banites otherwise trapped by the concrete around them. Concentratiion of People The Rockefeller Commission moved nationally at about the same relative point that Bryant began his crusade in New York. It predicts a growing concentra tion of people—some 73 per cent of a doubled population living on approximately 10 per cent of the Nation’s land area by the year 2000 —and foresees the prospect that the opportunity to develop suficient recreation areas near these concentrations may soon slip away in the onrush of civili zation. Just as Bryant wanted to get Central Park before it was too late, the commission wants to obtain this land for the people before it is lost to private hands. The crusade is being launched under propitious circumstances. The proposals of a commission instigated by Dwight D. Eisen hower pass now into the hands of the Kennedy administration and its Secretary of Interior, Stewart Udall, who has been straining for a year to get started on a major conservation effort. Mr. Udall has been looking over the shoulders of the commission as it wrote its report and is pre pared to put his prestige behind enactment of the proposals. Mr. Udall is in fact ready with a broad legislative proposal which will encompass most of the rec ommendations made by the com mission to preserve recreational opportunities for the future. He is a man who thinks big and some members of the commission had feared that he might attempt to bring forth an extravagant pro posal that would make the Rocke feller Commission seem conserva tive and his own prospects of leg islative enactment less likely. But Mr. Udall is known to be thinking in fairly moderate terms of a land acquisition program for the chance that snail fever may invade this country. So far, local cases reported (including 70,000 among New York City’s immigrant Puerto Ricans) have been con tracted in other countries. But two varieties of native United States snails are potential car riers of the fever, and American scientists are working overtime to find a cure—both to help other lands and protect our own. Snail fever is caused by a tiny worm of the Schistosoma family. It lays its eggs in warm waters of ponds and streams, and the larvae hitch a ride under the skin of snails where they incubate. After eight weeks they hatch microscopic arrow-shaped off spring millions of them can swim in an innocent-looking stream which penetrate human skins upon contact. Temperature Symptom The victim of snail fever starts out with high temperatures and aches, later developing an en larged stomach, anaemia, and chronic weakness. Often death oc curs after a general physical breakdown when the patient is prone to many other diseases. In addition to the human suf ering caused by snail fever, the loss in productivity is staggering. In Egypt alone, the disease costs an estimated $230 million a year in idled workers. Though the disease is one of mankind’s oldest known enemies —it was described in papyrus Editorial Ar jL ik-j —A.P. Photo. LAURANCE ROCKEFELLER Headed recreation study. the years immediately ahead that will cost less than $1 billion and be financed, like the interstate highway construction program, out of a special fund designed to avoid the necessity of appropria tions from the Treasury. The money for the fund will be ob tained by the imposition of a user tax against the 200 million or so people who now visit the national parks each year. These people will be required to buy stickers for their cars and the revenues will be used to assist the States in financing their acquisition of rec reation land. Bureaucratic Infighting The Udall plan will attempt to make the most of the opportunities that exist. For example, an ad ditional cost of about 8 per cent on the Interstate highway system would enable the planners to in clude landscaping, picnic areas and overlooks similar to those on the Blue Ridge parkway along these high-speed roads. Military surplus land now being sold by the government to the highest bidder could be diverted, in areas of population density, to recrea tion use at small expense. The Youth Conservation Corps, if it is established by Congress, would be useful in the development of at tractive parks. One of the curious aspects of the conservation movement is the way that it has been buffeted at critical turns by bureaucratic in fighting. The struggle between the Interior and Agriculture Depart ments over the forest lands is a classic example. Now the National Park Service is battling the com mission’s proposal to establish a new bureau of outdoor recreation to co-ordinate Federal activity and assist the States with their planning. Mr. Udall has marked the first phase of his mounting crusade by quashing these objections to the new bureau and is looking to the Rockefeller report to give im petus to the proposal which he will take to the Congress in a few weeks. documents 40 centuries ago scientists have not found the an swer for stamping it out. Killing the snail carriers in streams is costly and unsure. No specific snail poison 100 per cent effective has been found. The classic medi cine used to treat victims, tartar emetic, is so nauseating that many patients refuse to take it. Medical Firms Research But help is on the way. In addition to the Phoenix program, several pharmaceutical companies around the world such as Parke Davis, Eli Lilly, Ciba and Lederle are tasting drugs on infected animals. The World Health Or ganization is pursuing snail con trol and lecturing remote com munities on sanitary measures. The National Institutes of Health have run snail studies to head off the disease here. And two Chinese scientists. Mr. and Mrs. S. Y. Li- Hsu, a husband-and-wife team at the State University of lowa, last year reported on experiments using harmless strains of the Schisto soma worms to make subjects immune. Ultimately, scientists feel, the disease must yield like polio and syphilis to medicine. Between 1949 and 1958, 2,781 technical papers were published on the disease. Considering that nearly all the promising research has been done since World War 11, there is reasonable hope a cure will be found. In the meantime, the snail is winning. C-3