The Week

We’re rich. How rich? Well, if the wheat farmers of America were to lay off for a whole year—producing nary a bushel of the golden grain in all 1959—we’d have as much bread and spaghetti and wheaties as we ever had, plus as much as we have been in the habit of giving away to foreigners, and still end up with a substantial surplus for the following year. That is, if the wheat now held in cold storage at a cost of several hundred million a year were brought to market. Yes, America is a rich country. Crazy rich.

In the deadlock between Governor Rockefeller and Republican members of the New York State Legislature, we are wholly on the side of the Governor. Mr. Rockefeller was nominated for governor with the all but unanimous enthusiasm of Republican functionaries throughout the state. His program from the very beginning called for a super-welfare state. So he won the election, and proceeds, with a commendable fidelity to the voters he wooed, to put his program into effect—and everyone, the Legislature, the newspapers that backed him, the voters, starts yelping! Where do they expect to get the money from, for all those benefits they voted for? Mississippi? We believe the states should pay their way, and therefore back the swollen tax-bill of Governor Rockefeller. Unless the people are saying they have now thought twice about Mr. Rockefeller’s benefactions, and are prepared, on sober second thought, to do without them, or him.

Featured Tags

Martin Luther King Jr

NAACP

France

We’re rich. How rich? Well, if the wheat farmers of America were to lay off for a whole year—producing nary a bushel of the golden grain in all 1959—we’d have as much bread and spaghetti and wheaties as we ever had, plus as much as we have been in the habit of giving away to foreigners, and still end up with a substantial surplus for the following year. That is, if the wheat now held in cold storage at a cost of several hundred million a year were brought to market. Yes, America is a rich country. Crazy rich.

In the deadlock between Governor Rockefeller and Republican members of the New York State Legislature, we are wholly on the side of the Governor. Mr. Rockefeller was nominated for governor with the all but unanimous enthusiasm of Republican functionaries throughout the state. His program from the very beginning called for a super-welfare state. So he won the election, and proceeds, with a commendable fidelity to the voters he wooed, to put his program into effect—and everyone, the Legislature, the newspapers that backed him, the voters, starts yelping! Where do they expect to get the money from, for all those benefits they voted for? Mississippi? We believe the states should pay their way, and therefore back the swollen tax-bill of Governor Rockefeller. Unless the people are saying they have now thought twice about Mr. Rockefeller’s benefactions, and are prepared, on sober second thought, to do without them, or him.