The coastland times. [volume] (Mnateo [i.e. Manteo], N.C.) 1947-1959, 1951-04-06
IT TAXES
ALL KINDS
By DAVE WEsT

We're sorry to see that the best
thing the sports writer's of the
metropolitan dailies have been alb.
lie to come up with, as comment
on the recent basketball scandals
in New York, has been a series
of wordy discussions of which
schools in which sections of the
country pay their athletes the
most. We note that the sports
scribes in different sections are
sure that athletes in their owT
sections are paid far less than the
subsidized gargantuas hired by
remote institutions of learning
They've progressed, collegiate
athletics. 1t seems only short
time since it used to be conceiva-
BILE that an athlete might be pay
ing his own way through school.
At no incredibly remote period it
was thought that athletes some
times went to college because
they sought educational advan-
tages there, just as non-athletes
did. Seems awfully naive, doesn't
it? But who'd deny it was better
that way?
w. Somerset Vaughan has a
passage in one of his lesser nov
els describing a 10Th century
Spaniard who went to the capital
at Madrid and became success. +"
His formula for it is not out of
date. Those who scampered to
Washington to serve their coun-
try by following a maxim of their
own, "Who would serve his coun-
try must first serve himself" have
exactly followed the Spaniard's
prescription for achieving success
in the capital. Vaughan nutshell
ed it in part of a sentence: "and by
the exercise of subservience, fiat
terry, duplicity, unscrupulousness
and venality finally succeeded i'll
becoming highly respected"
It would be absurd to think that
young man of such thoroughly
despicable gifts could fail of a fat
living by the consistent exercise
of his parasitic talents if he new
er left the community in which he
was born. The fellow who will do
or say something, no matter
what, at the bidding of someone
else, need never know unemploy-
ment. We would add a dry, une-
motional alas.
A couple of weeks ago we aired
our ignorance about toll roads and
toll bridges. Among questions our
bewilderment made us ask was,
who would rather have toll
bridges than free bridges? First
hint of an answer we've had is in
a statement made by David Kelly,
speaking before the House Roads
Committee in behalf of the N. C.
Highway Users Conference.
Kelly said, in his talk against
the Turnpike bill, "Those most in
terested in promoting toll roads
are those who would gain most
from the high rates of interest on
the revenue bonds financing
them"
Now who would be ''those who
would gain most" from toll
bridges over the Alligator River
and Croatan Sound? (Look for no
broad and statesmanlike, Raleigh
style thinking. here-we're think
ing about what can affect us in all
this business). The big gamers
could hardly be the local folks
who would use the bridges most,
for they would gain most from
FREE bridges.
Is it possible, then, as Mr.. Kel-
ly suggests, that toll roads and
toll bridges are proposed, not at
all as benefits to the people of the
state but as transparent means
of legalizing profteering at the
expense of the people?
But that isn't likely today, sur
ely. Why, that's exactly what car
petbagging was, the milking of
the many for the fattening of the
few by quasi-legal methods. North
Carolina certainly doesn't choose
legislators to go to Raleigh to pro-
vide for homegrown carpet
Dagger caste.
No, there must be better reas-
ons for sadding the state with
toll-projects than that-or GER
tainly so many of our intelligent
representatives could not be found
to favor them !. Doubtless when
the true reasoning behind the bill
penetrates our dullness, we'll be
embarrassed by our shallow think
ing. All the same, you would
think the keen minds in Raleigh
would remember that some of
those they lead are not such deep
thinkers as themselves, that they
would explain to us of less
sprightly intellect what the reas-