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Past opinions provide perspective
Looking Back reviews opinions published in The Spokesman-Review during this week in history.
National forests, Feb. 18, 1906
The S-R editorial board supported the establishment of national forests. Idaho Sen. Weldon Heyburn did not, and this editorial addressed his opposition.
“Senator Heyburn’s attack on the forest reserve policy of President Roosevelt’s administration is so bitter and radical that his extreme views will not be adopted by Congress.”
It goes on to say: “It is always the part of wisdom to look well into the future. The great forests of the other states have been devastated, and the great forests of the Pacific Northwest will go in the same way, and more quickly still, if individual greed is not curbed. If the great sawmill concerns are given a free hand in these forests, and settlers are permitted to cut and slash and burn wherever they will, these forests will practically vanish within a generation.”
Shoveling snow, Feb. 15, 1959
The focal point of this snow-removal editorial is the tool itself.
“One of the oldest problems known to man is that of finding a way to remove snow from where he doesn’t want it to a pile where it can remain, out of the way, until sunshine and rising temperatures take care of it. The problem doubtless dates from the caveman era – if the caveman didn’t know better than to try to live where snow fell – yet it still hasn’t been solved.
“It is easy to believe that the cavemen used something like a scoop or shovel to move the stuff away from the cave door. Today, thousands of years and many thousands of inventions later, how does this householder remove the snow from sidewalks? With a shovel. This isn’t progress.”
It concluded: “There must be an easier way, but we’re a little slow about inventing it.”
Safe sex, Feb. 18, 1994
The federal government was slow to respond to AIDS. This S-R editorial lauded a change of course.
“People have sex before they marry. Most people, in fact. And all kinds of them: male, female, young, old, straight, gay, Christian and atheist. To pretend otherwise is futile and, these days, potentially dangerous. But, after 12 years during which our presidents barely mentioned the word “AIDS,” the Clinton administration is talking about it. In January, the government unveiled nine radio and television public service announcements promoting safer sex.
“The Centers for Disease Control reports 86 percent of men and 77 percent of women had sex by the time they reached 20. Of the 12 million new cases of sexually transmitted diseases annually, two-thirds occur in people younger than 25. The PSAs are targeted to the 18- to 25-year-olds who desperately need to hear them.”
It continued: “Unfortunately, a few calls and letters was all it took for Spokane’s local network affiliates to keep the PSAs off the air. What a farce. You can’t watch five minutes of TV without being bombarded with sex. … It’s a hypocritical society that fosters an obsession with sex yet won’t let people learn how to protect themselves from its dangers.”