Ellsworth County Independent-Reporter • Thursday, May 10, 2012
I-R
A4
Opinion
Linda Mowery-Denning Editor/Publisher
READER LETTERS USD 327 school bond issue — vote yes
Letter to the Editor: Ellsworth, Kansas, USA — April 2012 — As we all know, the proposed USD 327 school bond issue and the vote coming up on June 5 mean different things to different people. However, as a major employer in the community, I’d like to share what it means to Cashco, Inc. Cashco is getting ready to start construction on a new corporate headquarters in Ellsworth, which comes on the heels of a new engineering lab that we just completed. As a result, we expect to hire 30 to 36 new employees in the next few years. We are not the only new or existing employer adding to our workforce. Consequently, one of our most important recruiting tools to any potential employee is a good school system. Potential employees that are outside the community look at schools, health care, housing, and local shopping. When recruiting what we have traditionally seen is that the average new worker who moves into a community is between 20 and 40 years of age and still fresh in a career or trying to move up in a career. Some are still single, while others are married couples that already have young children or are looking at starting a family. Unlike older workers who are more settled in a community, they’re simply more willing to relocate. Whether your experience with having children in school is in the future, present, or past tense, we owe it to the children to provide the very best we can afford. This is why Cashco has been proud to have provided funding for smart boards at the elementary school, Interactive Games at the middle school, and Plotters for the Vo-Ag Department at the high school. We are privileged to have a school system that has been recognized for excellence several times over the years. USD 327 continues to make strides with fewer resources, and more requirements. Moreover, another part of the bond issue is the expansion of the vo-ag facility, which we believe will help cultivate industrial arts and hands-on technical skills, both of which we are very dependent on as an industry. If students are better able to hone those skills, maybe they won’t move away. Instead, they may decide they enjoy drafting, assembly, machining or equipment design and either stay in the community or go off to college in those areas and return home. Ellsworth County enjoys a large and diverse ag and manufacturing base per capita, this will benefit any employer that is looking for people with trade skills. Cashco believes in the vo-ag curriculum that is now available for 7th-12th grades, and is excited at the chance that the students have to explore various trade skills. In order to assist with these efforts, Cashco has been working with USD 327 to develop scholarships, internships, and OTJ that not only help in retaining and educating students, but also provide an avenue for employment and funds for additional schooling. The goal is to identify those students who want to become machinists, engineers or draftsmen and help them reach that goal through scholarship assistance and internship programs. In closing, the more we can grow the community via additional skilled jobs and better opportunities, the more we all benefit. So I would ask that over the next few weeks you look beyond the mill levy and focus on the future and the potential it provides for our children. Clint Rogers, General manager, Cashco, Inc.
Hospitals provide vital services
The Kansas Hospital Association invites you to join your area hospital in celebrating National Hospital Week, May 6-12. Celebrated since 1921, National Hospital Week is a time dedicated to reinforcing the valuable contributions hospitals make in our communities, caring for them 24-hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The 127 Kansas community hospitals provide vital health care services to our communities. Annually they staff nearly 10,000 beds; they see more than 318,000 inpatient visits (140,000 Medicare and 47,000 Medicaid); they assist in more than 40,000 births; they provide care during nearly 7 million outpatient visits; and see more than 1 million visits to Kansas emergency departments. Not only do our hospitals serve thousands of individuals, keeping our communities healthy, strong and vibrant, hospitals also benefit the financial health of our state. In Kansas, hospitals employ 73,890 people or 3.4 percent of all job holders and generate $4.2 billion in direct total income. In these challenging economic times, our hospitals support the creation of an additional 57,330 jobs in other business and industry and have a total employment impact of more than 131,000 jobs. For every one dollar of income generated in the hospital sector, another 48 cents is generated in other businesses and industries in the state’s economy; thus, having an estimated total impact on income throughout all business and industry of more than $6.3 billion. National Hospital Week is our nation’s largest health care event. This year’s theme, Making Miracles Happen, reminds our communities of the important work performed inside hospitals. More information regarding National Hospital Week can be found online at http:// www.nationalhospitalweek.com/hospitalweek/. Cindy Samuelson KHA — Topeka
Truth about postal reform By Reed Anfinson Special to the I-R
Now that the U.S. Senate has passed a bill, S 1789, to reform the ailing U.S. Postal Service, critics are trying to disable the bill on its way to the House of Representatives. Business Week recently catalogued unhappy stakeholders, including postal unions, postal management and some Republicans who wrongly think the bill burdens taxpayers. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., whose own bill awaits action in the House, blasted “special interests.” But Business Week says, “Considering how many people are unhappy with the bill, it isn’t clear which special interests Issa is referring to.” Some see Senate bill as the inevitable product of the sausage machine. But it is neither a budget
buster nor processed meat. It is the expression of a better vision of the Postal Service. If you consider that survival of the service means maintaining the circulatory system for a $1.1 trillion mailing industry — or in other words, making sure cash, greeting cards, packages and newspapers and magazines arrive on time, the Senate bill is good medicine. Consider some of the alternative fixes. Issa’s bill would let USPS immediately end Saturday mail, close half the mail processing centers and thousands of post offices, and put a new board of political appointees in charge. The new board would be expected to trim workers’ benefits and maybe wages, and direct the Postmaster General to favor profit over service. At the other extreme might be Sen. Bernie
Sanders, I-Vt., who wanted to keep everything open. Labor unions backing him say that USPS will heal as the economy heals. Then there is the White House’s notion: to raise postage rates. For Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., neither extreme is suited to long-term survival of USPS. To many experts, Issa’s approach is likely to frighten away businesses that mail. The Lieberman-Collins bill agrees that USPS needs a more flexible, less costly workforce. It keeps mail flowing through today’s network while cost-cutting is underway. For example, they would end Saturday mail delivery in two years, but only if USPS has taken other big steps toward financial viability. They would allow the closing of postal plants
now, if USPS preserves local mail delivery speed. Is their bill the product of compromise, or of a different vision? Consider: • The Postal Service’s plant-closing plan is based on a desire to amass more mail at automated urban centers, where costly machines sit idle much of the day. To optimize machines, USPS would haul mail much farther. But the hauling would slow the mailstream, particularly in small towns and rural areas that are far from mail plants and create a set of second-class citizens who get and send mail more slowly than urban dwellers. It will also hamper smaller communities’ quests for economic development. • Many Americans say they wouldn’t miss Saturday mail. But USPS See POSTAL, Page A5
A Texas ‘Droveress’
“There is a Texas droveress at Wichita with 1,000 cattle.” So noted the Ellsworth Reporter of June 26, 1873. Women were not entirely unknown on the trail. Wives often accompanied their husbands and sometimes brought the children along. But as far as I know, Margaret Heffernan Borland was the only woman referred to in print as a “droveress.” Mrs. Borland was no ordinary woman. She was born Margaret Heffernan, April 3, 1824, in New York City. Her family immigrated to Mexico’s Texas frontier where they were to adhere to the Roman Catholic state religion and required by law to speak the Spanish language. Her father was killed by Mexican and Indian raiders on his brother’s ranch in 1836. In 1843 Margaret married Harrison Dunbar, a young stockman from Victoria, Texas. Their daughter, Mary Dunbar, was born in 1844, shortly before Harrison was shot
to death in what has been termed “a private dispute.” Margaret married another rancher, Milton Hardy in 1845. Eliza was born early in 1847. Julia was born a year later. Eliza died before her third birthday. Sadly, Margaret’s mother died at about the same time. Two more babies were welcomed into Margaret and Milton’s family by 1852. But misfortune seemed to follow Margaret through every aspect of her life. Milton and their youngest son, William, died of Cholera in 1852. Through her marriages, the cattle business had been the one constant in Margaret’s life. It was only natural that ranching drew Margaret and Alexander Borland together. Borland’s holdings included more than 8,000 head of cattle.
Their marriage in 1856 produced four more children. But death’s hand was destined to knock again at Margaret’s door. The Yellow Fever epidemic of 1867 killed Alexander Borland, four of their children, and a new-born grandson. Margaret assumed management of the ranch with the help of a brother. There was money to be made trailing cattle to Kansas and if the cattle were going, Margaret was going to. A 25-year-old nephew, John Heffernan, Jr. served as the trail boss. Alex, 16, and Jesse, 14, worked as trail hands. Nellie was eight and a half and Margaret’s granddaughter, Julia, was six. As she prepared to point her family and trail herd toward the North Star Margaret knew that she would mark her 49th birthday somewhere on the trail April 3, 1873. Most trail drivers were young boys. Owners often took a steamship up the Mississippi, followed by a comfortable ride on the rails in a passenger car.
There would be no such comforts for Margaret Borland. After more than two grueling months on the trail Margaret and her traildriving family arrived safely in Wichita. She checked into the Planters Hotel in early June. The Wichita Beacon, June 4, 1873, recorded the historic event. “Mrs. T. M. Borland of Texas, with three children, is stopping by the Planter house. She is the happy professor of about 1,000 head of cattle, and accompanied the herd all the way from its starting point to this place, giving evidence of a pluck and business tact far superior to many of the ‘lords.’” Operating in a man’s world, Margaret’s ladylike character endeared her to all who met her. The rigors of the trail brought about the need for every trail-hand to purchase a new set of duds at the end of the trail. Margaret was no different. At Jake Karatofsky’s mercantile See GRAY, Page A5