80 years ago this week. Expenditures of $18 for lead pipe and the laying it has lightened the lot of a certain Lawrence county farm woman, 65 years old. In the 50 years she had lived on this farm, say rural engineers of the Ohio State university, this woman walked 5,710 miles and carried over 2,000 tons of water. At the farm in question, a just concluded convenience study found a well 140 feet from the house and 6 feet below it. For a full half-century this woman had been making, she said, an average of six trips a day, sometimes lugging a bucket of water weighing 30 pounds, and sometimes two. In this case to install running water all that was necessary was to lay the pipe and move the old pump up from the well to within the kitchen.
50 years ago this week. George H. Bender, congressman at large, is quoted as saying that the amazing coalition of labor and farmers responsible for the political success of the New Deal and the Truman administration, has come to a parting of the ways. The American Federation of Labor now calls for a restudy of the “effects upon the national economy of our present agricultural program.” The president of the A.F.of L. declared that labor is not “appeasing” our farm organizations “any longer.” What has caused this break is obvious. Agricultural price supports have been the key to farm policy over the past 18 years. Workers in the big cities now find that difficult to absorb. Beyond this is the basic truth that the nation’s farmers have always stressed governmental economy and a minimum of interference by Big Government in their affairs. They are ready to recognize once more that these are virtues which cannot be compensated for by checks paid to reward fallow land.
25 years ago this week. DeVon Smith of Wampum, Pa., may have put more hours into a Bicentennial project than anybody else in the country. Smith has been “building” the longest birthday card in history. For more than a year he has roamed the country, getting signatures on a great long sheet of paper which has a birthday greeting at the top. He wants to deliver it to President Ford this fall. Signatures include a number of famous stage personalities and well known politicians. As a showman should, Smith wears a very colorful outfit. The jacket, adorned with many insignia, is a bright red. Thousands of people in this area have seen him.
