It's Still a Man's World

In a March 19 letter to the editor, Don Vance asked why eight women who accused a Washington state senator of rape/sexual harassment were not named but the accused was. Good question. Who cares if the majority of the women said they would testify if the case went to court? Why wait to try the case in court? Look at the success of the Thomas-Hill media trial; no question that justice was served there.

Mr. Vance was kind enough to answer his own question: "Yet another example of equal (ha) rights favoring women."

Maryland is suffering from this devious trend as well. Both houses of the legislature passed bills requiring public facilities to provide equivalent restroom facilities for women.

Can you believe that one? Women are paying the same admission price now even though they often spend more than a half-hour waiting in line for the restroom while men do not wait at all. What right does the government have to force developers to spend money and waste space on such a trivial thing?

And what about Carol Moseley Braun defeating the male incumbent in the Democratic primary for a U.S. Senate seat in Illinois? If she wins, the percentage of women in the Senate will skyrocket to 3 percent! Women are taking over!

Mr. Vance expressed concern that The Sun may "participate in one-sided prejudiced reporting" that would favor women. I am sure he was comforted to see the March 22 Sunday Sun article "Women find it's a man's world at the State House -- and cope accordingly" share a page with a Hecht's lingerie ad that featured half-dressed women lounging on sofas. It's obviously "a man's world" at The Sun, too.

My only advice for Mr. Vance is to keep monitoring this situation closely. If women continue to succeed in this crusade to trample men's civil rights, he may have no choice but to find a nation where his traditional values are still revered.

I hear Kuwait is now open to foreigners.

Carole Martens

Baltimore

Handy Propaganda

Edward Flatteau's response to Julian Simon, "Easy Money" (Opinion * Commentary, April 3), uses an unsound argument much favored by overpopulation propagandists: the per capita ploy.

According to Mr. Flatteau, "Researchers for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization have documented that per capita crop land has been falling steadily since mid-century."

But the more meaningful data, unmentioned by Mr. Flatteau, are world food production and grain yields per acre.

In almost every single year of the past quarter century, world grain production made new, all-time highs. The only exceptions to this trend were a couple of years of drought coupled with the deliberate curtailment of crop production in the United States and Europe due to overwhelming surpluses on hand.

Grain yields per acre have also set new records nearly every year. The United States, for example, now harvests twice the corn crop it did 25 years ago, utilizing the same or reduced acreage. Of what relevancy then are per capita cropland figures?

Mr. Flatteau's per capita argument is nothing more than a handy propaganda tool to convert superlative food production advances into seeming declines.

Don't count your "Easy Money" too soon, Mr. Flatteau.

James A. Miller

Gaithersburg

The writer is director of research for the Population Research Institute.

Patient Trust

It is with dismay that I read your editorial of April 4, "Aromatic Bill in Annapolis." The article itself was truly flagrant with inaccuracies.

First, radiation oncologists do not self-refer. The company in question was seeking medical oncologists to invest in their company for their referrals.

Second, the state medical society has taken the position of the American Medical Association that with two exceptions, referral by physicians to facilities that they invest in but do not provide the service, has a possibility of conflict of interest and should not be allowed.

The fact that the Senate bill dealt with specific investment types such as radiation oncology, MRI and CAT scan, does not lessen the intent of the guidelines as set out for the physicians. The medical society does not favor some groups over others; it strongly supports the principles of patient trust and therefore avoidance of business conflicts that could undermine that trust.

Louis C. Breschi, M.D.

Baltimore

The writer is president, Baltimore County Medical Association.

In Ruxton

In these spaces (April 5), Alex Armstrong, writing from Ruxton, lamented that the new light rail has not yet worked out all the logistics vis-avis the light rail schedule, the new ball park and projected use. Because Ruxton rejected an MTA stop, he had to drive to Lutherville for schedule information.

Now that Ruxton has successfully denied access to Paradise by any means other than the internal combustion engine or by foot, residents continue bashing the MTA. Ruxtonian curmudgeons have made their sniping at the light rail a leit motif of their lifestyle -- practically a cottage industry.

It will probably take months to efficiently serve the thousands of new users of the light rail. The whimsy of commuters will stay a mystery until their new option is factored, by them, into their long-held patterns of transportation.

So, Ruxton, lighten up! Permit commuters'needs to seek their own level. In the interim, we are only eight years from the next mellenium: Join it.

Kenneth A. Willaman

Baltimore

Preserving Paper

Richard Louv wrote in The Sun March 12 of the chemically self-destructive nature of virtually all paper manufactured over the last 200 years.

Mr. Louv accurately described the high cost of transferring the intellectual content of brittle books to other media. Unfortunately, he misstated the difficulty encountered some years ago in the development of a low unit-cost technology for neutralizing the acids in modern papers that make trhem chemically self destructive.

The process Mr. Louv described was developed by the Library of Congress. An early effort to scale the library's experimental work up to production levels resulted in a fire. There was no explosion as Mr. Louv reported, no books were damaged and no people were hurt. More recently, a major international chemical firm. Akzo, has licensed the process and successfully offered deacidification services to libraries.

The Milton S. Eisenhower Library at Johns Hopkins was the first library to sign a contract with Akso, about a year ago. Several other libraries, including Harvard, have since followed suit. The process allows libraries and archives to preserve material in its original paper format for several hundred years at an affordable price.

The Eisenhower Library has long held a leadership position in book preservation. We were pleased to help bring this vitally important and successful new preservation technology into the marketplace.

Scott Bennett

Baltimore

The writer is director of the Milton S. Eisenhower Library.

Cotton Promotions Help the Trade Balance

On Feb. 23, The Sun printed a very misleading article. The Sun edited the original Associated Press article by Jennifer Dixon and, in the process, removed any semblance of balance and objectivity. For the record, what was not included in the article makes a very good story for the market promotion program in current farm law.

Here's what was not included about the program.

The goal of the market promotion program is to encourage foreign companies to buy U.S. agricultural products.

People don't buy soybeans, wheat, corn and cotton. They buy cooking oil, cereals and clothing -- products which have been processed into consumer brands. The purpose of COTTON USA brand promotions is to persuade consumers to choose brands made by companies buying U.S. cotton.

The Sun article reported that Cotton Council International featured Gunze, a Japanese knitter of underwear, in more than $1 million of our COTTON USA program advertising. What your article didn't say is that when Gunze buys yarn, they specify it must be made of U.S.-grown cotton.

Your article didn't say that in the last two years, Japanese spinning mills have bought $60 million worth of U.S. cotton to satisfy Gunze's requirements.

What we need is more manufacturers in Japan to do the same, and the foreign brand promotions funded by the market promotion program are making it possible.

The increase in U.S. cotton exports during the first five-year period of the program, compared to the previous five-year period, added $2 billion to farm income. Much of this can be attributed to the market promotion program.

Extensive press reports about on-going GATT negotiations remind us that nations around the world, e.g., the European Community and Japan, spend far more to support their agricultural sectors than the United States -- and they have no intention of stopping this practice, as suggested by Americans.

In the face of this, U.S. expenditures supporting farm income already have been cut by 50 percent. Of the total spent to support U.S. farm income, only 1 percent is devoted to building market demand. Under the GATT negotiations, the market promotion program has been recognized as a positive, legitimate endeavor for government funding and has been classified as a "green light" activity.

No companies, U.S. or foreign, are given money by Cotton Council International to subsidize their advertising. Only products containing a majority of U.S.-grown cotton are eligible to be mentioned in the COTTON USA promotion program.

If the Cotton Council International mentions a foreign brand, that company must reciprocate by an equal amount of advertising for U.S. cotton. Last year, the licensees spent 2.5 times as much in reciprocal advertising as the Cotton Council International.

U.S. agriculture is helping to offset the U.S. trade deficit. Agricultural exports are adding jobs to the U.S. economy. The U.S. recognizes that our industries must do a better job of competing abroad. Rather than eliminating programs that work, programs that make good business sense and make agriculture the shining star in the U.S. economy, we ought to be looking at the market promotion program for ideas on how to help the rest of our industry compete in global markets.

K. Adrian Hunnings

Washington

The writer is executive director of Cotton Council International.