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.
May 9, 1963
AN ERROR IN JUDGEMENT
It is, of course, impossible to deny that America's reputation has been injured abroad by the pictures of savage dogs tearing at the Negro citizens of Birmingham, Alabama, and the one which shows five white policemen attacking a Negro woman on the sidewalk... one with a knee in her neck.
No-one can reasonably claim these unfortunate people have harmed anyone by their integration marches, or that they have exceeded the rights guaranteed to every citizen by the Constitution.
We will say, however, that the Negro leaders of this affair have been guilty of a serious error in judgement.
Their error is simply in living among the brutish and savage white people of that area.
In fact, it is difficult to understand why their ancestors ever chose to leave Africa and emigrate to Alabama in the first place.
May 29, 1963
ON WASTE
An hour or two in front of a TV set will give anyone a hint as to the latest trend in consumerism. It is engineered waste. Farm surpluses and factory surpluses and the resultant ruin and unemployment for Americans country and city, at least superficially appear to spring from a productive capacity which has outrun consumption.
What's the answer? Waste, of course. Teach the American people to throw away what they buy, and they will be back sooner to buy more!
The pressure can is the greatest device yet for selling waste. Not only do the contents sell for five to ten times the price of the same product in an ordinary container, but the can you throw away succeeds in wasting a couple of ounces of whatever the can held, which cannot be delivered by the spray mechanism. “Do not puncture this can,” you are warned, as if the resultant explosion might blow off your head.
Two TV commercials drew our attention. On one, a model smiled glassily while she waved a can of hair spray around her head. A good portion of the spray appeared to be aimed at mosquitoes rather than coiffure. So much sooner empty, and poor old Hubby can buy another!
Hubby, meanwhile, was closeted in his bath, where TV commercials seem to spend too much time. He was doing up chin and jowls with shaving lotion, and the announcer's voice intoned, “Splash it on!” Gently, insistently, repeatedly: “Splash it on! Splash it on! Splash it on!”
The America of World War II did not really know hard times or hungry times, and will not unless we blunder into World War III. We remember keenly, however, the motto that paced us through those economizing years. It was good then, it is good now: “Use it up, wear it out; make it do, or do without!”