Biting Back

In the weeks before their 1960 presidential primary. West Virginians got plenty fed up with outside newsmen who toured their state and wrote shocked reports of its backwardness and bigotry. The article that seemed to irritate them the most appeared in the Saturday Evening Post and described West Virginia as a "schizophrenic"' state, populated by hillbillies, with an "enormous" illiteracy rate and "a higher ratio of illegitimate white babies than any other state." Last week West Virginia bit back: to Philadelphia, the Saturday Evening Post's home town, went a reporter-photographer team from the Charleston Daily Mail. Result: a two-part piece on America's "filthy cradle of liberty."

Tramping Philadelphia's streets, the Mailmen, found and photographed debris-piled back yards, trash-littered alleys, garbage-lined gutters and ramshackle outhouses. "Putting it bluntly," wrote Reporter Charlie Connor, "much of Philadelphia stinks." He noted that 2,200,000 Philadelphians are crammed into a 127-sq.-mi. area as against 2,000,000 West Virginians inhabiting 24,181 square miles. "Therein lie a lot of Philadelphia's pains," wrote Connor. "It's like having all the pain in one big toe, whereas West Virginia, at least, has its aches spread over all its toes."

Where the Saturday Evening Post had written sadly of West Virginia's hungry hillbilly children, the Daily Mail found its own pathetic Philadelphian. It frontpaged the plight of 15-year-old Ricky Westcott, an 87-lb. shoeshine boy with a stomach ulcer, who worked the city's streets until late at night to buy the food his destitute family could not provide. The boy had one great desire: I'd sure like to go hunting and fishing in West Virginia." An invitation to underwrite his expenses was soon forthcoming, and with it a friendly letter from West Virginia's Governor Cecil H. Underwood.

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