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The Seaforth News, 1962-11-15, Page 6'Pias There Ewer Sheikespeore? The Ancient Controversy Still Goes lin by TOM A. CULLEN Newspaper Enterprise Assn. STNATFORD-ON-.AVON — "I shall sit on the grave day and night if these people come and try to disturb Shakespeare's rest.. irug place," said Fred Baker, beadle and town crier of this historic community. Baker, like many Stratford- Ites, is disturbed by the actions of a group which doubts that Shakespeare was Shakespeare, Stratford's prosperity is built on the fact that William Shakes- peare was born here in 1564, Every year 170,000 overseas vis- itors, of whom nearly half are American, make a pilgrimage to this literary shrine, More important stili, they /pend $11 millions in Stratford's restaurants, hotels and souvenir Shops. But now all this prosperity is threatened by the Shakespeare Action Committee. Not only do members of the committee doubt oat Shakespeare's plays are his but they are demanding that the Bard's grave be opened in order to prove their point, The committee makes much oaf the fact that none of the mann- /scripts of Shakespeare's plays has ever come to light, "It is ridiculous to argue that authors to those days did not keep the Manuscripts of their plays and end poems," the committee man- ifesto declares. Therefore, if Shakespeare real - if nzy bishop were in favor of opening it, 1 would not allow the tomb to be disturbed." To do so would be to commit sacrilege, he maintains, Other Strattordians recall the curse inscribed on Shakespeare's tombstone: "Blest be the man who spores these stones, And curet be he who moves my bones," That the demand to open Shakespeare's grave is merely the opening shot in a general campaign against the whole Shakespeare cult was admitted to me by Francis Carr, founder of the Shakespeare Action Com- mittee. The committee also challenges the authenticity of the timbered house in Henley Street, which Ls shown as Shakespeare's birth place. "There is absolutely no proof that Shakespeare ever ed in the house, let alone being born in the front upper room,' says Carr, who is among other things a magazine publisher and a tutor in Russian. history, Carr is what is known as e "Baconian"—that is, he believes that Shakespeare was Francis Bacon—but his committee in- cludes all shades of anti -Shakes- peare opinion% There are, for example, some who believe that Shakespeare was Christopher Marlowe. One prominent member of the com- mittee is Christmas Humphreys, brilliant criminal lawyer, whose SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE: Or is it? ly wrote those plays, chances are that .the manuscripts of some of then. will be found buried with his remains in Holy Trinity churchyard, Stratford, the corn mittee argues. To say that the proposa•I to dis- inter the bones of the immortal Bard has created consternation here is to put it midly. "Grave robbers, body snatchers, ghouls —" these are some of the more polite epidthets hurled ..t the committee, Before Shakespeare's grave can be touched, permission must be obtained from the Bishop of Conventry, in whose diocese Stratford lies, and from the vicar of Holy Trinity Church, the Rev. Thomas Bland, So far the bishop has remain- ed silent in the controversy, but Rev. Bland leaves no doubt as to where he stands. "Over my dead body," he says, in effect. "Even if I were given proof Neat there were manuscripts in.. side," declares the vicar, "even candidate for the Shakespeare stakes is Edward de Vero, 17th Earl of Oxford. The bond that unites these men is their determination to expose "the great Shakespeare hoax," and thus to end Stratford's ex- istence as a literary shrine. Says Francis Carr: "Stratford is a fortress well defended by the walls of inertia and vested interest, but we think we have found its weak point, and that is Shakespeare's tomb. That is why we intend to press for the grave to be opened." EDITOR'S NOTE: Washington Irving is the authority for the statement that Shakespeare's grave was actually opened In 1796 by the sexton of Holy Trin- ity. While an adjoining vault was being dug, the sexton took the opportunity to peek into Shakespeare's coffin, but he found only dust, according to Irving. This had Ied some scho- lars to believe that the grave may have been robbed earlier, WNW EVER HAPPEN TO YOU? THESE TWo NEiaMSQR$ HAVE BEEN EXTgNoiNa 114518 LAWNS INTO THE VACAN'r or BETWoSN mel so Lama They THiNK 11 - My OWN IT j By Bioko r a7 Iii, r; Pu htr.•• .5> -t ;1.,. r ,.9982.s'•rrld t:: k rovt vrd, 44. 41 S -3o RAVE FiLTER TIP — Realizing that the taste really was different, this young lady opened her cigarette to discover a five -dollar bill rolled tightly inside with just a hint of tobacco at each of the cigarettes ends, Credit Unions Expanding Fast One of the nation's fastest- growing and most constructive institutional groups is striving to make itself both better, and bet- ter-known. Its members are the credit unions. These are self-help co- op-eratives, organized to aid mem- bers to pool their savings. The co-operatives then loan to mem- bers — to meet emergencies, to buy appliances or homes, or to start small businesses. Thus credit unions free their members from total dependence on private moneylenders, or com- mercial loaning institutions, They also pay modest dividends, and inculcate savings habits. The U.S. nation's first was or- ganized in a Manchester, New Hampshire, parish in 1909, By 1950 there were some 9,000 of them with combined assets of about a billion dollars, By mid - 1962 there are 21,000 with 13,- 000,000 members; and their as- sets have grown to $8,500,000,000, or by six and one-half times in 12 years, In Canada, where the first North American credit union was organized in 1900, there are an- other .5,000 with 2,700,000 mem- bers, and assets of nearly $1,500,- 000,000. By percentage Credit Unions. are increasing more rapidly in numbers, membership and assets than any other United States fi- nancial group; though their total assets are very small compared with those of the general finan- cial world. Almost all United States credit unions belong to the Credit Union 1 National Association, directed by H. Vance Austin, and with head- quarters at Madison, Wis. It is working to establish credit unions throughout the world as well as nationally — there are now one or more in 67 nations. It is a consultant for United Nations agencies such as FAO and UNESCO, and recently signed an agreement with AID (Agency for International De- velopment) to foster South Am- erican credit unions as part of the program of Alliance for Pro- gress. A similar plan is contem- plated for Africa, Credit unions are fine boot- strap -lifters. Mr. Austin says that in his own home town in Color- ado the credit union helped more young fellows returning home from Wood War II to start their own businesses, than did the town's banks. And he tells of an Indian on the shores of the world's loftiest lake, Titicaca in Peru, who used a credit union loan to start his own business in making sandals from old tire casings. Credit unions take advantage of natural groups of people. They have been started in thousands of industrial plants, usually with labor - management co-operation; in labor unions themselves; in church congregations; teachers' organizations; in compact neigh- borhoods. There are even credit unions among employees of big financial institutions — 30, in fact, among United States banks alone. And they are "naturals" for the membership of co-opera- tives organized for other pur- poses, Yet they are little known at large. A recent pilot "public opin- ion" survey authorized by CUNA showed that most people, includ- ing many members, have only a nebulous notion of what credit unions are, or what they do. The word "union" marks thew for many people as having some- thing to do with labor, and opin- ion seems to be strongly colored by a person's foaling about labor unions, Some bankers regard them as amateurish, and so on, Actually, most of them really are started by people without much experience, and thousands of smaller ones are still staffed by members working in their 185111; 43 -.. 1002 spare time, either "moonlighting" (roan their regular employment, or doing it "for free," The larger unions have profes- sional management, and some have good-sized staffs, But one fundamental need remains—that for skilled managers, of whom there are never enough to go around, writes Roscoe Fleming in the Christian Science Monitor, So CUNA recently held a four- day meeting at Denver which was for managers and other person- nel alone, and was in effect an intensive seminar on all the problems that might confront credit union people, At this meeting was organized CUES Managers' Society (Execu- tive Services) which is for such personnel exclusively and will, like any other professional so- ciety, devote its efforts to educa- tionupgrading and training. The credit union people think there is shill much room Inc organization, despite the fact that many or even most large natural groups have been organized, In the United States credit un- ion activity varies greatly from state to state. More than 17 per cent of Hawaiians belong, while iesa than 3 per cent of Arkan- sans do. Though the movement didn't start here, more than 90 per cent of the world's credit union activ- Ity is centered in North America. Sixty-seven nations each have one or more credit unions, but nonetheless most of the free world is still virgin territory. Their origin is usually traced back to Germany during the lib- eral mosement of 1848. In North America, a French journalist named Alphonse Desjardins or- ganized the fist one in 1900, in a poverty-stricken Quebec village named Levis. The 'first contribu- tion per member was a dime, and the new financial institution started with total capital of $26, Later Desjardnns wenn to the United States and organized the first United States credit union in 1909, in a parish at Manches- ter, New Hampshire. Then Ed- ward A. Filen, the great Boston merchant prince and .public ser- vant, took it up. He and Desjar- dins are regarded as fathers of the movement, and CUNA head- quarters at Madison are in Filene House. State by state, Iaws authoriz- ing credit unions were enacted, and in 1934 the original federal incorporation act was passed. The story since then has been one of quiet but continuous expansion. Q. When a bride is writing her thank -you notes for wedding gifts received, does she also write to the bridegroom's parents and to his sisters and brothers Inc the gifts they gave? A. This Is not necessary, 1ff she has been able to give them her sincere, verbal thanks. Steam Oroilers Con Be Deadly Too! By the time it reaches the north-easterus tip of Manhattan, the Great White Way becomes just plain Broadway, a family street characterized by middle- class apartment houses, sem* Small Shops — w and thetidy, yellow -brick uptown district se - counting and commercial office of the New 'York Telephone Co. The air-conditioned building is only six years old; its brightly lighted interior is painted with eye resting pastels, The nearly 500 employes -- mostly women, many fetchingly young — need only to descend to the semi - basement cafeteria for lunch, At 12:07 p.m, one clay recently these were about 100 lunobers there. Suddenly — as a waitress said afterward — "it sounded as though an atom bomb had ex- ploded." One of the three oil -fired low- pressure bailers had burst. Like a space -bound rocket weighing snarly 10 tons, the boiler shot through a wall into the cafeteria, Deflected upward by the struc- tural steel girders, the 15- by 6 - foot missile tore into the ceiling, collapsing a 20- by 12 -foot sec- tion of the steel and concrete floor of the accounting room above. The boiler caromed off a steel beam in the roof, reduced another interior wall to rubble, and came to rest against a crumpled 14 -inch steel column, some 150 feet froz z the boiler. room. Running out of his West 2131Jh Street apartment, Francis Hol- land said: "It was terrible . . we pulled two women nut, then we were forced back by the heat and the steam. We could hear people screaming: "Help met Help met" The bodies of the dead and injured were strewn around the vapor- and smoke-ohaked cafe- teria, tangled in twisted tables and • chairs. The final toll: 21 dead, 95 In- jured. A s the inspectors sifted through the wreckage behinet boarded -up windows, the neigh- borhood barber Paolo Bruno looked out of his window and sadly shook his graying headi "The building is nothing," he said. "You can .always build a building. It's the lives of the people." DEATH DINED HERE The interior of a telephone company business office is in shamb- les after a boiler exploded, killing and injuring scores of persons, many of them young wom- en who were eating lunch. L/ ST RiTES POR BLAST VICTIMS — A priest bends over the bodies of girls killed in o New Yorrl' explosion of a telephone business office,