THE NOME NUGGET
Published Monday, Wednesday and Friday by the
NOME PUBLISHING CO.
NOME, ALASKA
Telephone 443-2381 $1.50 PER MONTH
P.O. Box 610 $16.00 A YEAR
E. P. BOUCHER . Managing Editor
CLINTON GRAY . Production Manager
Entered at second class matter October 14. 1943, at the
post office at Nome, Alaska, under Act of March 3, 1879.
SHOWING THE SLICKERS HOW IT’S DONE
. • . »v .■ > v > . ■ .; • > •
Clean-Up Week
1IMANY PEOPLE took advantage of the early spring and cleaned
up their yards as soon as the snow was gone and removed the
debris at their own expense or with the cooperation of the sani
tary services.
Now it is time for the big clean-up throughout the community
and extending down to the beaches, not only to make the com
munity look better but for health reasons as well.
The city is providing trucks this week for the boxed junk
and next week heavy equipment will pick up those items which
were too heavy to move this week.
Everyone is urged to cooperate and get those unsightly
barrels which are no longer usable out of circulation. An inspec
tion will be made by the Health Committee.
Customs Office at Idlewild
Inaugurates Honor System
NEW YORK — An honor
system experiment began Satur
day at the Customs Office at Idle
wild Airport for visitors and U.S.
citizens returning from abroad.
They had only to fill out a
simple identification form, customs
agents politely accepted their oral
declarations as to whether they
had exceeded allowances in pur
chases abroad.
This is the first time the sys
tem has been tried in the Conti
nental United States. If success
ful, it will be applied to all the
aerial gateways to this country.
The simplified form requires no
listing of purchases except in cases
where the maximum $100 has been
exceeded, or where purchases are
being received after the arrival of
the passenger.
The form, issued by the Treas
ury and distributed by the air lines,
says baggage may be examined on
entry into the United States. It
adds that non-residents may make
their declarations orally, and that
the same usually applies to re
turning residents of the United
States.
Not man but an insect, the ant,
has the largest brain in proportion
: to its size.
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Crowd of Muscovites
Sentence Three Youths
To Exile from Capital
MOSCOW UP) — A crowd of
2,000 Muscovites sentenced three
youths to exile from the capital
for speculative dealings with
foreign vistors, Pravda reported
Friday.
The Communist party newspaper
said the three young Russians
were placed on trial before the
crowd Thursday in a square in
Moscow’s Luzhniki Sports Park in
what is known here as public
court.
The report said witnesses testi
fied that the young man had
traded Western-made clothes and
foreign currency with visitors to
Moscow.
The unusual open-air trial re
ceived prominent play in Pravda.
It appeared to be intended as an
object lesson in the Kremlin’s cur
rent campaign to discourage Rus
sian contact with the thousands
of foreign tourists in Moscow.
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Red China Report:
Living Standards
Editor’s Note: Refugees from
Red China report hopeless pov
erty behind the Bamboo Curtain
but there is another side to the
coin. In the last of a special
series of articles a British author
who just completed a travel
agency tour of the country of
fers a glimpse of Red China’s
living standards.
By RICHARD P. LISTER
PEKING LW — The average
Chinese worker earns about 70
yuan a month—$30. At the Wuhan
Iron and Steel Company, the low
est wage was $15 a month, for ap
prentices; the highest, for skilled
workers, $50. The manager re
ceives just over $100 a month.
These were basic wages, to which
a production bonus might be
added.
It does not sound like much.
But what counts, of course, is what
the worker can buy with it. If he
has an apartment, or part of an
apartment, in one of the new
blocks that have sprung up in the
cities and villages since the revo
lution, he will pay 2Vz to 5 yuan
a month for it—not more than $2.
What he pays is based on his fam
ily income—3 to 7 per cent of it.
On top of this he pays a fee for
light and water, which averages
out at about half a yuan per
month, or 25 cents. Repairs are
free. Having paid his rent, he has
to buy his food, and this will cost
him about $5.
He will in most cases be sharing
his apartment with another family,
but to a man who probably spent
his boyhood years sleeping nine
or ten to a room in a hotel, this
is no particular problem.
He has a bed for his wife and
himself, and separate beds for his
children; a radio, tables and chairs
and a picture of Chairman Mao
Tze-Tung on the wall. The furni
ture is good quality, the rooms
clean and bright; there are no car
pets. His wife shares the kitchen
with someone else, but the food
she cooks there is enough for
them all; and this is luxury, in a
land where “enough,” for the ma
jority, has always been a distant
dream.
These, it must be remembered,
are the showplaces, the best ac
commodations available to the
more fortunate workers.
Having paid his rent, and bought
his food, the average worker has
two-thirds of his wages left, about
$20. What can he do with it?
Here the picture is a little differ
ent. The goods are there—clothes,
radios, bicycles, furniture — but
the prices are not so very different
from those for the cheaper ranges
of similar goods in the West.
Roughly speaking, he is in the po
sition of a man with the wages
of 1933 living in the world of
1963.
He is decently dressed in his
blue jacket and trousers, with a
shirt—but never a tie—and a roll
necked pullover if it is cool; a blue
quilted cotton jacket for cold wea
ther. But these are all the clothes
he has and they serve him for
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“Awfully Nice” . . .
INDEPENDENCE, Mo. UR —
Harry Truman said Saturday it
was “awfully nice” of Sen. Barry
Goldwater, (R-Ariz.>, to say that
the nation needs another Harry
Truman as President.
Goldwater, speaking before an
insurance group Friday night at
Tucson, Ariz., said Truman’s ad
ministration was marked by a
forthright policy which is lacking
in the Kennedy administration.
“The more I think about it,” he
said, “the more I think Harry Tru
man will go down in history as
one of the greater Presidents.”
“That’s awfully nice of him,”
Truman said Saturday morning
when informed of Goldwater’s
comments.
“I never had any argument
with Goldwater,” Truman con
tinued. “I think he is honestly ;
trying to do a good job. And I
thought that before he said those
nice things about me last night.”
One out of every six persons in
the US. working force is a gov
ernment employe.
feast days, holidays, and work
days.
He has a radio, and a bicycle—
the streets are full of bicycles—
but a camera or a television set
is a rare luxury. He does not even
dream of possessing a car.
Before he needs a car, after all,
he needs leisure; and Chiang is not
yet very rich in this commodity.
He works eight hours a day, six
days a week. A man is given four
days off a month, a woman six.
They have two weeks’ holiday a
year, if they are lucky — some
have none—and this may be spent
in visiting relatives. Their own
children may be staying with
grandparents, and be seen only on
rare occasions. In the spring, one
or two days must be spent in
visiting the tombs of their ances
tors, an annual honor that most
Chinese pay to the spirits of the
departed.
The idea of medical treatment
available to all, ideally for no
thing, was a surprise to the Chi
nese we saw. If a worker has to
see a doctor or go to a hospital,
the Chinese told us proudly, he
gets his treatment free; but his
family or dependents have to pay
half the cost of their treatment.
This can be rough.
11
1
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Increase in Fallout
Predicted This Year
WASHINGTON UP) — Largely
because of last year’s Soviet nu
clear tests there will be an increase
in fallout this year. But the ex
posure to Americans is still too
small to cause concern and a change
in the national diet.
This report was made Friday
by the Federal Radiation Council,
a top-level government group that
surveys available radiation data.
The fallout radiation an Ameri
can will take in over 30 years is
equivalent to one-thirtieth the
amount he’ll get from natural ra
diation in the soil, rocks and build
ing materials, the report said.
There will probably be an in
crease in strontium 90 dosage to
bone—an increase that will deliver
to new bone formed—this year’s
radiation is equal to one-fourth
the natural background radiation.
But even that should drop in
succeeding years as exposure to
strontium 90 lessens, and there is
a turnover in the normal growing
processes of bone. Strontium 90
intake is believed to be a cause
of bone cancer and leukemia—
cancer of the blood.
The fallout figures, the council
said, are “far short of figures which
would cause concern,” but spokes
men were hard put to say just
what figures of concern would be.
Bed Disappears . . .
WIGAN, England — Barry
and Mureen Slater, married here
returned from their wedding to
find their bed had disappeared.
The bed was a present from the
groom’s father, who had put it
outside for removal to the newly
weds’ home. They also put out an
old bath tub which they asked the
trash collectors to take away.
The garbage men took the bed
and left the bath. When the couple
rushed to the garbage depot they
discovered the bed had already
been burned.
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