Summit County Labor News

Letters to the Editor

To the Editor:

I've read Eddies Davis' resolution asking Bill Ayres to support the Forand Bill. I've read Bill Ayres diatribe and alibi for not going on record supporting the measure. I've read the editorial where Jack Knight blew his top and condemned the city council for the audacity of suggesting to Bill Ayres that he be doing something to meet the problem of the aged.

Bill Ayres contends that because the city council doesn't understand the congress that it keep its nose out. I wish Bill would accept that thinking in regards to unions. He has no background in the affairs of labor unions, yet he writes laws, demonstrating his ignorance that we have to abide by.

I'm a retired worker who would be affected by the law, and I know from personal experience the need of a program to furnish medical care for the aged. I retired almost eight years ago from the Beacon Journal. Before retiring I prepared for the years to come by getting new furniture, new rugs, automatic washer, enough clothes for my wife and I to last for some time. I had the house and garage painted and repaired. I was set to carry on for quite awhile without any capital investments.

The increased cost of living made it harder each year to live on our limited income. After the eight years the garage is a disgrace, the house needs painting, the furniture and wall paper are beginning to show their age. The social security is no longer ample to meet the expenses.

Unless there is some relief legislation, I am faced with starting to eat the home; this after working continuously for more than fifty years. Newspaper printers don't have much lost time. I know Bill is going to say you should have saved your money. When you are feeding and clothing a family of four; when you are buying a decent home for them to live in, and when you are giving two kids an education up to and through college you don't have much chance to save on printers' wages.

I wasn't lucky like Jack Knight—I didn't inherit a newspaper—I had to plug along setting type to make profits for my boss for forty years in Akron. When my boss sold his paper to the other fellow he kept all the earnings and left me to go to the other fellow where I could start all over to help the other fellow make enough money to pay for the paper he just bought. First, I helped the Times make enough to pay their notes and then when they sold out to the Press, I went to the Times-Press to help them pay for the Times. When the Times-Press sold out to the Beacon, I went to the Beacon to help them pay for the Times-Press. Heck, I earned the same moneys three times, and don't get a darned cent of it for my old age. My slip was on the Beacon board for more than eighteen of the forty years I spent in the Akron newspaper industry. All I got of the deal was Gertie's love and my own self respect. That, of course, is more valuable than Jack Knight's millions.

JIM McCARTAN