EVENTS & DISCOVERIES
Nice Try,Counselor
The round andresonant voice of Counselor Kenneth Royall, onetime Secretary of the Army,boomed out in the marble-pillared hearing room of the Supreme Court of theUnited States. As defense counsel for the International Boxing Club he wascontending, with a mountain goat's sense of footing, that the Supreme Courtought to reverse a lower-court ruling which called the IBC a monopoly, and atthe same time he was contending that if the Supreme Court did not reverse theruling it ought, perhaps as a friendly gesture to monopolies everywhere, toallow the IBC to go on doing business much as before.
He did not put itquite that way, naturally, but that was the way it sounded to the lay ear.
In the lowercourt, after finding that the IBC was indeed a monopoly in violation of theantitrust laws, Federal Judge Sylvester J. Ryan had ordered that theInternational Boxing Clubs of New York and Illinois (they are one and the sameIBC) be dissolved. He ordered that their owner, James D. Norris, president ofMadison Square Garden, get out of the Garden, which owns IBC of New York. Heordered that the Garden and the Chicago Stadium, owner of IBC in Illinois, beavailable at reasonable rental to other promoters.
One effect of hisorders would be to end the IBC's control of all home TV fights.
But Royall's ideaof a good solution, if it were found that the law had been violated, wouldbe:
1) To prohibitthe IBC from having exclusive contracts with boxers.
2) To prohibitthe IBC from exclusive contracts with arenas except the Garden and theStadium.
3) To limit theGarden and the Stadium to two or three championship bouts each a year.
Except for thethird item, these proposals would leave the situation pretty much as it is. TheIBC has no real need for exclusive contracts with boxers. As the sole TVpromoter it can control them without contracts, simply by depriving them ofwork if they act ornery, giving them work if they genuflect. It can perpetuaterule of the championships by seeing to it that only properly brain washedmanagers get TV fights for their stables. It can build up fighters it favors,ignore those who do not accept its rule.
The Garden andthe Stadium, to take up Royall's second suggestion, are in fact the only arenasthe IBC now controls directly—though it has very pleasant arrangements withother arenas about the country. Local promoters who accept IBC terms and fightsget TV bouts to promote. Others do not.
So two points ofthe Royall proposal would change nothing. The third would deprive the IBC, asconditions now stand, of perhaps three or four championship fights a year, butit could easily allocate these to friendly lesser promoters.
As to thesolution proposed by Judge Ryan, Royall's brief asked:
"What heinousoffense have these defendants committed which could justify the extraordinarilypunitive nature of the [Ryan] decree?"
Well, heinous isnot the word most persons would use for the IBC, though there are some whowould not protest it. But softer, apter adjectives come to mind—words likegreedy, destructive, tyrannous and totalitarian. They all fit the IBC. They alljustify the Ryan decree as a common-sense solution to a problem that long hashad boxing by the throat.
The Supreme Courtwill now deliberate for perhaps two or three months before announcing adecision. Those who want to see boxing free can only hope, meanwhile, that thehigh court's decision will achieve the end that Judge Ryan wished, that boxing"be opened with television and radio broadcasting to legitimate and healthycompetition."
Five-Star BillXIV
One of the moreimportant duties of the marine platoon which stands sentry duty at the UnitedStates Naval Academy is guarding a rather raffish character named Bill XIV, wholives just aft of the sentry box at the entrance to the marine enclosure. BillXIV used to live underneath the football stadium at Annapolis, but he wasgetting a bit punchy and irritable after twice being chloroformed andkidnapped; hence his new and better-protected quarters. This week, with theArmy-Navy game imminent, Bill XIV's honor guard is at what might be called aGuadalcanal pitch of alertness.
Bill XIV wears asmany stars as a fleet admiral, a heady distinction for a goat, which Bill XIVis. Not an ordinary goat, in any way. First, he is the mascot of the Navyfootball team; second, he is a full-fledged character in his own right. Once,in a fit of school spirit, he chased Handsome Dan, the Yale bulldog, up intothe Yale cheering section in New Haven, then grinned goatishly at Dan and theYalies. Another time, he treed (up the goal posts) the young Princetonian whocavorts at football games in a tiger suit. He fulfills Navy's goat needsadmirably, since Navy, in seeking one of his predecessors, once asked for the"meanest, orneriest and smelliest" goat in the state of Texas. Bill XIVfails on only one count; a steady diet of chlorophyll has removed most of thegoat odor, so that he is probably one of the sweetest-smelling goats in theworld.
He was kidnappedonce by Army and once by Maryland and returned groggy but undaunted each time.The Army task force that made off with Bill added insult to kidnapping byattacking in an amphibious operation, stealing up the Severn River by night ina boat, chloroforming Bill in his pen under the football stadium, then retiringunder cover of darkness to drop back down the Severn to a waiting car. Bill waspacked into the trunk and whisked off to West Point, where he appearedunhappily before the cadet corps. Later, the Military Academy detailed a majorto return Bill to the Naval Academy.
The most famousof Bill XIV's predecessors was Three-to-Nothing Jack Dalton, who is stuffed andon view in the Navy field house. He served from 1906 through 1912 and got hisname because twice during his tour of duty Navy's original Jack Dalton kickedfield goals for 3-0 victories over Army. Three-to-Nothing Jack Dalton is arather small, white goat; Bill XIV, although his parentage is a bitundistinguished, is a much more impressive animal. He has golden eyes,magnificent horns and a shaggy coat of an indeterminate shade of blue which iscurried into magnificence by Smokey Phelps, a retired Negro laborer who attendsto Bill. Bill was donated to Navy by an Annapolis barber after the sudden deathof Bill XIII on Thanksgiving Day, 1947. Bill XIII and XII were both Angoragoats given to the academy by the State of Texas.
At Navy games,Bill XIV is resplendent in a blue-and-gold blanket with a big N on the side andfive stars. The stars do not indicate that Bill XIV is a fleet admiral; he getsone for each victory over Army during his tour as mascot.
Bill XIV, likehis predecessors, serves another important purpose during a Navy game. He isalways pointed toward the opponent's goal line, so that a beleaguered or evenconcussed Navy quarterback need only glance over at Bill to know in whichdirection he is supposed to be leading the team.
Disarmament inNorman
The way we alwaysgot it, Texans have been horsing around with guns for years. Then all of asudden—bang—they are too noisy. Least ways, that's what the Dallas police saidafter last month's Texas-Oklahoma game. Oklahoma has this way of firing off sixshotguns after every touchdown. And even though the Sooners had only twoopportunities this year (Texas won 15-14), the city Rangers reckoned that wastwo times too many. They decided to make it a federal case.
Last week thehandiest federal men—who happened to be antimoonshine boys from the TreasuryDepartment—showed up in Norman. Flashing their badges and a yardstick, theytold school officials that the sawed-off shotguns used by Oklahoma violatedfederal regulations. And then they confiscated one under 18 inches and sent theproblem off to Washington for top-level adjudication.
The pep squad,meanwhile, will be permitted to use its blank-loaded shotguns provided they arestored by Norman police except during games. The agents did not specify whetherafter a touchdown the students may or may not point the barrels towardDallas.
HousingDevelopment
In the last fewyears, while almost any product you can name was being invented, repackaged, orbrought out in a do-it-yourself kit, people somehow kept overlooking doghouses.Though the dog business was booming, the doghouse business almost didn't exist.This oversight on the part of free-enterprising Americans was taken care ofrecently, though, by Richard Stambaugh and Douglas Fuller of Akron, Ohio, bothof whom are tool-planning engineers for the Goodyear Aircraft Corporation.
Encouraged oneday by a woman who complained that her beagle was essentially homeless becauseshe could not buy a doghouse and didn't know how to build one, Stambaugh andFuller experimented until they produced a prefabricated doghouse which can bebrought to a building site as 13 pieces of plywood and galvanized steel, andquickly assembled without bolts, screws or nails. It is lightweight,demountable and prepainted white, and it comes in four sizes. It can be had inother colors, or with extra accessories like an awning or a front porch, atwhat its makers call "de luxe prices."
Regular pricesrange from $16 to $45, and on this basis Stambaugh and Fuller are in business.Three nights a week and on weekends, they turn out doghouses in Fuller'sgarage. A neighbor, Nick Russ, has been taken into the enterprise, and thethree men, sometimes helped by their wives or children, produce a doghouseevery 40 minutes.
"We figurethe demand is tremendous, if only we can make and market them fast enough,"says Stambaugh contentedly. "Our major problem has been convincingcustomers that they don't need a big doghouse for a small dog." This isbecause a dog's own warmth heats his house for him; a small dog in a bigdoghouse is an ineffective heating unit, like a bonfire in a stadium.
As the KliccoProducts Co. (so named because the metal strips which hold the doghousestogether slide into place with a click, or maybe a klic), the neighbors alsomake cat carriers and shipping crates for dogs. And because so many peoplesuggested it, they have turned out a husband-size doghouse for husbands. Theypoint out, with an unfailing sense of the practical, that children can play init when it isn't being used for its original purpose.
Welcome to theWoods
In the misty graylight of predawn one day this month a long line of automobiles bristling withsporting armament wound along a lonely road-in the state of Washington'sOlympic Peninsula. As the sun broke over the horizon, a big gate barring theroad was swung open. An attendant peered into each car as it passed through,handed the driver a detailed map of the territory he was entering and wishedhim good hunting. By the time the sun dipped down into the opposite horizon,the wish had been granted in full for at least one of the happy hunters.
"The fellowswho didn't have any luck today just didn't know where to go," exulted FrankDennis, a Hoquiam, Wash, mechanic, pointing proudly to the big, three-pointbuck trussed on his fender. "I had my draw all staked out. I was here lastyear and I'll be back next year. What a deal this is!"
What a dealindeed, not only for Frank but for thousands of others like him from Maine toCalifornia who are privileged to indulge their favorite hobby on once-forbiddenlands. Each year these thousands are the welcome and invited guests of thenation's tree farmers whose 42 million-odd acres of privately owned, tax-payingtimberlands abound with wild life.
There was a timenot long ago when the timber on these lands like the wild life that overranthem was cut down ruthlessly and with no thought of replenishment. Signsreading PRIVATE PROPERTY—KEEP OUT and NO HUNTING served only to invite theillicit poacher to careless slaughter. Largely through the wisdom of alumberman named John Philip Weyerhaeuser, a new attitude began to take shapeabout 20 years ago. The nation's future supply of lumber was assured with theintroduction of a "tree farming" system under which forest trees wereplanted and cultivated like farm crops, albeit mighty slow-growing from thefarmer's point of view.
At the end offive years, a crop of seedlings (often planted by helicopter) in a typicalWeyerhaeuser fir farm will be only two to five feet high. From then on theywill continue to grow at the rate of a foot a year for the next fifty years, bywhich time thinning and natural losses will have cut the original thousands tosome 250 stout trees an acre. Thirty years later still the 250 will be readyfor harvesting to produce some 50,000 board feet of lumber. During the longwait for the next harvest, the undergrowth in which the young trees growprovides ideal feeding grounds for multitudes of game, some of which canseriously threaten the future crop. A single black bear, for instance, canstrip and kill upwards of 1,200 trees in the spring and summer, when thetoothsome sap is running just under the bark. The idea of inviting well-behavedhunters to enjoy the forest during its period of growth and to help offset theravages of the native game was an intrinsic part of the whole orderly notion oftree farming.
Today theopen-door policy inaugurated on the Weyerhaeuser timber-lands has spreadthroughout the entire lumbering industry. At a time when national and stateparks are filled to overflowing and constantly threatened by the call-to-natureof millions more vacationers, the sense-making hospitality of private industryin the timberlands has opened up millions of acres of new vacationland. Many ofthe lumber and pulp companies supply their visitors with recreationalfacilities as elaborate as those in any state park.
Two years ago 1.5million vacationers streamed into the privately owned woods to enjoy hobbies asvariant as fern picking and bear hunting. Last year, the total was well above 2million. It seems a pretty fair return for the inroads the industrial age hasmade in other haunts of the nature lover.
CreepingFitness
The CitizensAdvisory Committee on the Fitness of American Youth met at Fort Ritchie,Maryland last September to fulfill its function: furnishing advice to thePresident's Council on Youth Fitness, a group made up of five Cabinetofficers—the Secretaries of the Interior, of Defense, of Agriculture, of Laborand of Health, Education and Welfare.
The AdvisoryCommittee made its recommendations (SI, Oct. 27), and in doing so it expressedthe hope that within 30 days it would learn the reactions of the President'sCouncil to its advice. Last week came the Council's reply, and it isdisappointing to note that the chief merit of the response was its promptness.The report was on the sketchy side and indicated that the Council still thinksof its main task as one of "promotion and stimulation" of others,rather than of focusing the federal government's sizable existing resources onestablishing a fitness program. One explicit action on the "promotion andstimulation" front: by presidential proclamation, the week of May 3-9, 1959will be observed as National Youth Fitness Week, and the Council promised thatpackets of material suggesting ways and means of celebrating the weekeffectively will be prepared for local communities and organizations.
The covering notefrom the Council's busy chairman, Interior Secretary Fred Seaton, who spentmost of October on the election circuit, obliquely apologized for thesketchiness of the Council's response. "An effort has been made," hewrote, "to give enough information to indicate trends and the direction wewill take."
Meanwhile, theCitizens Advisory Committee (129 members) prepared to organize within itself anexecutive group (17 members) which could meet more often than the fullcommittee and so keep more directly in touch with the President's Council. Thusthe cause of physical fitness for the youth of America moved forward slowly;but it moved.
Fffffft!
Hounds have plumbforgot the fox,
They don't care where it's at;
They've stopped off in an alley
For a game of One Old Cat.
--F. E. White
They Said It
Henry Paul, Olivet College coach, lolling in gloryafter his team snapped a 29-game losing streak: "I knew we'd win some day.I always felt it was just a matter of time. Jeepers, though, I was beginning towonder."
Jack Kelly, Olympic sculler, questioned by teen-agerson Princess Grace's athletic ability, did some broken field running betweenbrotherly love and frankness: "She was a fair hockey and basketballplayer."
Ed Campbell, sports editor of the Charleston News andCourier, who has been "effigied" himself, announcing a new association,the "I Was Hanged in Effigy" club: "There has been a crying needfor such an organization for a long time. For years, those of us hanged ineffigy have had to catch it in the neck. The organization will start workimmediately lobbying for more loopholes, softer rope and better hangingconditions. The club undoubtedly will grow as people begin to get the swing ofit."
AFTER THE INTERNATIONAL BATTLE OF LAUREL
Let's vamp awhile with "Volare" until weknow.
And next year we're sending 'Erb Elliott.
Suspended! and only 26 shopping days to Christmas.
Damn it, the sputnik dog never had to return.
O.K., Nikita, meet real capitalist.
Horse racing is too tough.
NINE ILLUSTRATIONS
ILLUSTRATION
"And where may I ask is Goucher?"
