From local scenes of action;

              FROM LOCAL SCENES OF ACTION
Alexis de Tocqueville, after a visit to
the New World, described in 1835 the
energy with which Americans were
getting things done in their communi­ties:
"No sooner do you set foot upon
American soil than you are stunned by
a kind of tumult.... Everything is in
motion around you; here, the people of
one quarter of a town are met to decide
upon the building of a church; there,
the election of a representative is going
on; a little further, the delegates of a
district are posting to the town in order
to consult upon some local improve­ments;
or in another place the labourers
of a village quit their ploughs to delib­erate
upon the project of a road or a
public school."
Were our visitor to view today the
local news on a thousand television sets
across the country, he would find that
the American drive for-community ac­complishment
has become a deep-rooted
characteristic. Though we claim
no systematic study of the matter, there
is evidence that the people of Haskins
& Sells are no strangers to these local
scenes of action.
12
Wilbur Harris, principal in our Chicago
Office, had lived only a year in Palatine,
Illinois, 30-odd miles northwest of The
Loop, when he saw his new home's
value threatened. Zoning laws can
easily erode in a town that has grown
from 2,000 to 17,000 in less than 20
years, and the land across the street was
about to be rezoned for commercial use.
In fighting that fire, Will Harris got
interested in village government, and
by 1961 he found himself in a hot four-way
contest for mayor as candidate for
the new United Citizens Party. He won
more than half the votes and carried
with him his party's candidates for four
of the vacancies on the Board of Trus­tees
and the Police Magistrate as well.
In his three years in office, 5,000
more souls have been added to Pala­tine,
and the town is bursting at the
seams. Planning and zoning top the
agenda. The local courts have been re­formed.
Pay-as-you-go budgeting has
wiped out a $40,000 deficit and
brought confidence back to Main Street,
while new business has moved in to
help share the tax load.
After hearing Charles Percy address
the annual meeting of the American
Institute in 1959, Will Harris told his
wife, Patricia, "I could work for that
man if he ever runs for office." Last
April, against party machine opposition
and early adverse odds of ten to one,
Harris, as Chairman of the Palatine
Township Citizens Percy Committee,
delivered a whopping two-to-one mar­gin
toward nominating Percy for Gov­ernor.
Ask people in Hastings-on-Hudson, up-river
from New York, about Woolsey
Carmalt, and the replies come fast:
"I'm a great admirer of him," " . . . a
conscientious member of the commu­nity,"
" . . . good citizen."
Mr. Carmalt, on the research staff in
the Executive Office, has just completed
his one-year term as President of the
Hastings School Board. He has never
"won" an election and couldn't con­tinue
as President if he wanted to. The
office rotates annually among the trus­tees,
and Hastings thinks it gets its best
talent on the Board by keeping these
elections uncontested and non-political.
In Woolsey Carmalt's brief term in
office, confidence in the School Board
has been restored. It had been badly
shaken in 1963 when the school budget
suffered its first defeat in the memory
of old-timers.
Budget time came again in January
of this year, and President Carmalt and
his Board went to the taxpayers to ex­plain.
For four or five evenings a week
they could be found at meetings of any
of the seven neighborhood associations
in Hastings or the PTA. The budget
was approved with a ten per cent in­crease
over last year, and Hastings can
now put to effective use its first new
school building in thirty years.