Editor, Old Style

A proud, slumbering, self-contained city is Charleston, S. C. Charleston society, penuriously descended from South Carolina's ante-bellum aristocracy, looks down on rich Yankees who have bought and restored great estates, on Northern industrialists who in the last ten years have built factories on the city's outskirts--looks down even on the rest of South Carolina when it stoops to push for prosperity. The temperament of old Charleston invigorates the bosom of 71-year-old, baggy-suited Dr. William Watts Ball, editor of the Charleston News & Courier.

Dr. Ball, the son of a Confederate colonel, is a passionate believer in Southern womanhood and States' Rights. Once, in a letter to the Baltimore Sun, Editor Ball wrote: "The News & Courier would . . . protest against sending two young women to jail even though they made slighting remarks about the Confederate flag."

For 15 years Dr. Ball fought Prohibition because he considered it an encroachment on States' Rights. Since Prohibition was repealed in 1933 he has fought the New Deal for the same reason. In sulfurous editorials the News & Courier repeatedly attacked the Santee-Cooper River hydroelectric project, which pushing politicians set afoot to get $40,000,000 out of the New Deal for South Carolina (TIME, June 12). He described it as "a set-up of politicians without known qualifications to build and develop industrial plants," called it a project "shot through with extravagance and waste."

One day last fortnight South Carolina's Public Service Authority announced that it was closing its Charleston office, moving to the State capital at Columbia. Reason given: the Charleston headquarters were only for preliminary work, now done. Along with the Authority would go PWA employes in Charleston.

Charleston's merchants (who, unlike the old families, have long since warmed to the little TVA) rose in arms. Cried Mayor Henry W. Lockwood: "It seems that . . . the constant nagging of the newspaper on the Authority and everything the New Deal is for has brought this thing to a head. . . . The next thing you are going to do is lose your Navy Yard."

The Retail Merchants' Association sent a committee to persuade Dr. Ball to promise to go easy on the Authority. It was a stiff kind of pressure for any local editor to resist. Editor Ball drew himself up and said: "I have my own opinions and will stick to them."

In the News & Courier Editor Ball wrote gallantly: "Is it expected and demanded that a newspaper calling itself honest should stand by in silence, lest some of its friends suffer loss by not sharing in extravagant and wasteful spending of public money by genial politicians? ... If the editor of the News & Courier is an obstacle to Charleston, a thorn in its flesh, he ... is prepared at a moment's notice to remove himself. He is not prepared to move from his opinion. . . ."

Last week Charleston's merchants waited for a hearing before the Authority to urge it to reverse its decision. In Columbia, Governor Burnet Rhett Maybank (first chairman of the Santee-Cooper River project) called on the General Assembly to investigate the Authority.

Said the unshakable Dr. Ball: "There has been some discussion as to whether or not Mr. Roosevelt reads the editorials in the News & Courier. Why, if he had been following them since June 1933, when the New Deal first was doubted, the country wouldn't be in the fix it now is."

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