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TB« SOUTHERN ISRAELITE
Friday, September 16, 1966
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As We Were Saying
By ROBERT SEGAL
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LADIES’ and MEN’S HATS
(A Seven Arts Feature)
The returns are still coming in
from this June’s Commencement
speeches; but my guess is that
nobody inspired more of the good
ones than Ralph Nader.
You remember Ralph? He’*
the 31-year-old author of “Un
safe At Any Speed” who was
shamefully spied upon for Gen
eral Motors, only to show up be
fore a Congressional committee
just in time to light an auto safe
ty fuse which may—just possibly
may—help to cut back the hor
rible toll of some 50,000 lives lost
in traffic annually.
The Nader affair will be re
membered for years. Ralph has
entered the halls of the renown
ed who helped break the big city
political machines, exposed the
railroad robber barons, stopped
some of the raids on our natural
resources and blasted the bill
boards off the highways.
But in a way, Ralph’s assign
ment was tougher because he
undertook his crusade in an era
of indifference, a nation of af-
iluence, and a climate of “Just
you dare, young man!” He ac
tually had the nerve to value a
human life above automobile
profits and that’s dirty pool in
the United States.
Yet, if Ralph Nader was the
hero of the drama, Henry Ford
II became, perhaps unwittingly,
a strong member of the support
ing cast. For while Ford’s first
reaction was disbelief that the
great god, Industry, would be
permitted to take a kicking
around, he recovered in time to
make a stunning speech of his
own about the social ills that
plague us.
In the first flush of embarrass
ment over young Nader’s cheeki
ness, Ford said, you will remem
ber, that the attacks on the In
dustry were unwarranted, that
Detroit (if left alone) would
make really safe vehicles, and
that the economy might get
trampled in the shuffle if this
nonsense kept up. (“I question
seriously whether they — the
investigating congressmen — have
considered the possible economic
impact of the kinds of laws they
are considering — the economic
impact on our industry. Because,
if you start by law to fool around
with model changes, to tell the
industry that it must do this, that
or the other thing to its products
. . . you upset the whole cycle of
this industry.”)
But soon that other speech of
Henry Ford’s was humming over
the newspaper teletypes; and this
time, the automobile maker said
that business leaders have a duty
to join the war on poverty, dis
crimination, ignorance and un
employment.
Then he said: “The economic
and technological triumphs of the
past few years have not solved
as many problems as we thought
they would, and, in fact, have
brought us new problems we did
not foresee."
Allan Nevins, one of our great
historians, had said it perhaps
better: ‘‘We can be certain that
the necessity for a cultural and
moral growth to arm us to meet
change will grow urgently, even
ferociously. The voices which
counsel us to spend all our en
ergies on science are sinister
counsels. Most of our energies
must go to the development of
the intelligence and character
which can control science."
Another outstanding American,
Reinhold Niebuhr, who had a
pulpit in Detroit early in his ca
reer, recalls an earlier Henry
Ford, the one who gave us mass
production of automobiles. Nie
buhr has said that the elder
Henry Ford “combined mechan
ical genius with social and his
torical ignorance”; and Niebuhr
has pointed out that the new in
dustrialism “aggravated most of
the problems of industrial jus
tice it claimed to have cured.”
The wisdom of Nevins and
Niebuhr and many more of our
social philosophers, coupled with
the guts and perserverance of a
few young men like Ralph Nader,
may yet extricate us from the
hole that technological marvels
have dug for us. This wisdom and
this courage are needed to
awaken millions of Americans to
the damage done not only by
unsafe automobiles, pollution of
air and water, and the idiocy of
sub-mediocre television program
ming: needed even more is an
awareness of the misuse we have
made of the opportunities that
ingenuity and engineering have
brought us.
Thus we shall have to realize
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RALPH L. SACKS
125 W. Ponce de Leon Ave. Decatur, Ga. 377-5577
that we can have architectural
triumphs in our churches and
synagogues, only to learn also
that we are turning to religion
for the wrong reasons (to con
form, to catch God in the little
web we spin, to realize a busi
ness objective). We will realize,
too, that we may turn out 400-
mile-an-hour monorail transpor
tation, yet be lonely in transit
and without yesterday's wonder
ment when we arrive at the end
of the journey. We can make a
killing in business and yet be
oblivious to the price we have
paid in ulcers.
Some of the young people lis
tening intently to the commence
ment addresses inspired by the
Nader Affair understood perhaps
much better than Henry Ford II
and his shaken contemporaries
did. They have shown they un
derstand because they are acti
vists in the long overdue revolt
against universities which up to
now have been turning out too
many trained juveniles, univer
sities which from this time forth
must be about the business of
sending forth educated adults.
171 Fncktrn Strut RE / it Jttlnti Cibioi Mi til / 874-3857
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