The Underclass

To the Editors:

We are in your debt for making visible and understandable the plight of America's underclass [Aug. 29].

Time and again when jobs that meant real paychecks have only been hinted at, thousands have turned out early at the opportunity. Many useful things need to be done to make our lives more civilized. Public service jobs--or the Government as the employer of last resort--are good for people who hold those jobs, and for the rest who are working.

Franklin Wallick

United Auto Workers Washington Report Washington, D.C.

I am sick and tired of hearing about the underclass. What about those of us who spend thousands of dollars and many years to better ourselves through education only to find there are no jobs for our skills? Let's stop concentrating on the underclass and start helping the educated; maybe then more jobs will open up for the poor. After all, where does the future of our country lie, with the educated, or with the poor, or with the poor educated?

Jill Konwinski

Sterling Heights, Mich.

You make it sound (or look) as if everyone who is on welfare and jobless is black or Puerto Rican. A lot of them are white too.

Laura Pruett

Springfield, Mo.

Albirtha Young complains, "It's no easy job just sitting here from one year to the next doing nothing." She is tending eleven children. That's doing nothing?

Caren Dewar

Minneapolis

In your discussion of remedies for the awful problems of "The American Underclass" you seem to have left out the most necessary first step, perhaps the most important answer of all: birth control.

Katherine Newman

Cedarburg, Wis.

As a young black growing up in the Bottom in Knoxville, Tenn., I never knew how deprived I was to have to sleep in the same room with my two brothers, mother and grandmother until sociologists and urbanologists informed me later. I didn't realize it was primitive to have to heat water on a coal stove for my Saturday night bath and to have to use the back-porch toilet until I was grown. Yet I feel lucky when I see many of today's youngsters leave their modern, publicly financed housing projects not realizing what respect, love, compassion or soap and water are all about.

Robert J. Booker

Detroit

Ethics and Morality

Jimmy is proud of Bert [Aug. 29], and I am disappointed in Jimmy. I believed he meant all that stuff about ethics and morality. Perhaps the rest of the country needs to be educated in the Georgia variety of those virtues.

William W. Weaver

Haddonfield, N.J.

Now we know why President Carter chose Bert Lance as budget director and has such confidence in him. Anybody who can juggle his personal finances the way Mr. Lance has had to do obviously was ready for bigger things. The guy is a magician--just the quality we need to balance the federal budget.

Albert Clark

Groveland, Calif.

Attacks by the press against Bert Lance weaken America by disheartening other good men from accepting the challenge when called to public service.

William H. Wilkerson

Atlanta

King of Rock 'n' Roll

I am 34 years old, and was one of the screaming teen-agers who rode that '50s tram with Elvis [Aug. 29]. It doesn't matter that I have every Presley record released from November 1955 through June 1959 and none thereafter. It doesn't matter that I saw Elvis in person in 1957 but never again. It doesn't matter that I saw only the first four of his 33 movies and only the TV shows that he appeared on in the '50s. The bond that was established between Elvis and me so many years ago has never been broken. He is a part of my youth that I can never lose.

I feel truly sorry for what life seems to have done to Elvis the man. But in reality, nothing can tarnish the memories I cherish of that young, sensuously handsome, painfully individual, harddriving, soft-speaking rocker who changed my world and influenced my life so many years ago when he was there, and I was there, and the time was right for America's youth to stand up and scream "This is mine!"

No--not the last stop on the "Mystery Train." I, for one, will ride it the rest of my life.

Sharon Jankovich

Des Plaines, Ill.

I can't believe it! Instead of giving us a cover story about Elvis Presley, a man who made the American dream a reality, you gave us an eight-page spread about an American nightmare.

Rebecca Everly

Livermore, Ky.

The King of Comedy

Three and one-half pages on Elvis and one paragraph on Groucho [Aug. 29]? Shame on you.

Dennis Staples

Fremont, Ohio

Groucho was the divine king of comedy, and his passing is disheartening to his fans. Your article was far too short to encompass his accomplishments or even to describe the joy he brought to millions. His impact will never be forgotten.

Steven Casper

Baltimore

I can only assume that the Groucho Marx I knew is not the same one whose passing was noted briefly in your Milestones column.

I hope the excuse is not that he chose to die on a weekend. I doubt that TIME would want to suggest that, of all people, Groucho's timing was off.

Dick Cavett

New York City

Is it my imagination, or were you guys a little skimpy with the Groucho Marx obituary?

Woody Allen

New York City

"Dignity" and "Justice"

Upon his return from Cuba, Senator Church [Aug. 22] stated that his host Fidel Castro was a man of "dignity" with "a great sense of justice." I would like to ask the Senator how he defines dignity and justice in the case of a man who keeps his people under constant surveillance, has thousands of political prisoners tortured, and sentences countless others to be shot by firing squads merely because they dare to disagree with his policies.

Raul Alfonso

Miami

I was five years old when my parents and I left Cuba in 1962, but the struggle and suffering my family, friends and fellow countrymen have experienced as a result of the Castro takeover has been very real to me since then.

Has Senator Church forgotten the young men who escaped from Cuba on the wheels of an airplane headed for Spain? Has he forgotten the many people who have escaped on rafts and small boats to live in freedom?

Alina S. Palacios

Auburn, Ala.

Children of God

My brother joined the Children of God [Aug. 22] over five years ago, is happy and has to my knowledge never shared his wife with anyone.

The Children of God open their coffee houses, as well as their hearts and homes, to everyone. They have sat up all night with junkies and prayed for them. They share what little they have with the poor. I guess this is why the other countries, so poor in money and rich in love, welcome them.

Gail Sparks

Centerville, Ohio

As a former member of the Children of God for two years, I can personally testify to the nearly incredible evils perpetrated by the group and its "prophet," David Berg.

It will never cease to puzzle me how so many people can be so deceived for so long in spite of all evidence against their delusion. Even some parents of cult members will defend to the death the madmen who enslave their children's minds. Fortunately for me, God has special providence for fools and idiots, and some of us escape. I was one of the few lucky ones to escape with my life and sanity still intact.

Stephen Thomson

Chicago

Normalized Relations

If China wants normal diplomatic relations as much as or more than we do, it seems unfair that the U.S. be required to make all the sacrifices by breaking relations with Taiwan [Aug. 29]. It seems reasonable to assume that China could make its sacrifice by promising not to take over Taiwan by force.

Leonard Schoppa

Vernon, Texas

We people in Taiwan are confident that we will outlive the menace of tyranny. We will carry on for years, alone if necessary!

I'll be proud of having been a real Chinese struggling in my own land.

Chao Tsung-hsu

Hsin-tsun, Taiwan

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