(2 of 3)
Sir:
Re "Bombs for Everybody": "The U.N. felt it would be impolitic for a peace organization to recognize the [New York City air-raid] drill." Impolitic hell! If anyone should be drilling, it should be U.N.ers in their glass house. Can't you just see 5,000 ostriches with their necks buried in piles of glass, yelling: "This is impolitic!" There will be no diplomatic immunity if the bomb comes.
JIM WORSENCROFT San Francisco
For Trade, Not Aid
Sir:
John L. Lewis, as reported in your Sept. 28 issue, says that Japan stopped buying coal as soon as U.S. aid stopped. For the record, Japan has since 1945 been a regular purchaser of U.S. coal to the average amount of 2,000,000 tons yearly . . .
. . . Certainly, Japan cannot forever continue to buy from the U.S. unless barriers to trade permitting Japan to earn those dollars are opened to it.
To sit back smugly as Lewis has done and say to buy more from the U.S. without an explanation of where the dollars are coming from is stupidity in its most lucid form . . .
W. E. CONNOR
Yotsuya-Tokyo, Japan
Sir:
. . . His logic can only lead to the argument that the U.S. should not expect to export to other countries any more than it is willing to import from them . . . That is all that the "trade, not aid" contention is. DAVID G. PHILLIPS
Chicago
Off the Hook
SIR:
IN RE YOUR DRAMATIC PIECE ON MIRROR'S CRIME ACE SID HUGHES HELPING FBI BY LONG DISTANCE TELEPHONE [OCT. 5], IT'S PROBABLY FIRST TIME IN HISTORY THAT HOT EXCLUSIVE STORY COST NEWSPAPER 60,000 CIRCULATION. SID'S STORY ACTUALLY BOOSTED OUR NORMAL QUARTER MILLION DAILY SALES INSTEAD OF DROPPING THEM TO 188,000 WHICH YOU INADVERTENTLY QUOTED. NOW HUGHES IN NEED OF FBI PROTECTION FROM OUR WOUNDED CIRCULATION AND ADVERTISING DEPARTMENTS. CAN YOU GET HIM OFF HOT SEAT?
J. EDWARD MURRAY
MANAGING EDITOR THE MIRROR LOS ANGELES
Grinding Axes & Taxes
Sir:
As an underpaid, overtaxed wage earner, it is difficult to describe my disgust at reading ''A Federal Sales Tax" [Sept. 28].
We pay one sales tax in Arizona, and that's one too many . . .
EARL F. CODNER Tucson, Ariz.
Sir:
. . . A federal sales tax does what its backers think it will do: it places the Durclen more on the low-income-bracket classes than on the higher-income-bracket classes . . . The present federal excise tax structure is not discriminatory; it puts the burden on such articles as are capable of bearing it . . . A 10% manufacturers excise tax means a 10% tax at retail and no act of Congress is likely to change that . . .
JOHN PARKANY Loyola University Graduate School Chicago
Sir:
. . . Until about 1912 our Federal Government was supported by a tariff upon imports and a tax upon liquor and tobacco products. Then a demand suddenly arose to "soak the rich" . . .
No one ever suggests that the rich pay more toward the support of our commerce than those of us in the lower-income groups.
But, as you know, we have countless thousands of thoughtiess damn fools who think that the rich should bear most of the tax burden . . .
CHARLES C. KING Seattle
Sir: