The Whole Shebang

August 22, 1953 — The Klamath Falls Herald


The Mossadegh Project | September 15, 2021                 


The 1953 coup in Iran

A newspaper column by Frank Jenkins, the opinionated editor and publisher of The Klamath Falls Herald (Oregon) from 1942-1960.




In the Day’s News

By FRANK JENKINS

Tehran’s airport was jammed this morning with crowds of people and cheered as their young shah stepped from his private plane that had brought him back to his country after a brief exile resulting from his difficulties with Old Man Mossadegh. As he came down the steps from the plane’s door, Iranian officials in top hats and striped trousers threw themselves on the ground to kiss his feet. Whereupon the people cheered more loudly and wept more happily. Tears filled the young ruler’s eyes as he took in the spectacle.

Something new in the world? No. It is very, very old indeed. For countless centuries, when an old regime ends and a new one begins, the people have wept with joy, hoping that the new one would be better than the old one. Hence the cry that has resounded down through history: “The king is dead, LONG LIVE THE KING.” Off with the old and on with the new.

The future just HAS to be brighter because the past has been so bad that the future just MUST be better. Modern as we Americans are, sophisticated as we profess to be, we felt that ancient emotional upsurge on the morning after the fourth day of last November. When will the people (including us Americans) learn that good government comes to the people ONLY through the enlightened efforts of the people themselves? Good government never has come to any people BY ACCIDENT. Good government never will come to any people by accident.

Here’s another story: A special train is carrying Morocco’s new sultan this morning to Rabat. There is no joy in Morocco because of the change. Instead, the Arab population is glum and grim and quiet. Why the difference? The French are sending in the new sultan to replace a sultan who was getting too nationalistic (Morocco for Moroccans) in his ideas. The French are backing their new PUPPET sultan with strong army and police forces and have Rabat under tight military control. It’s the old story of the master cracking the whip. The children of Israel left, the land of Egypt and fared forth into the land of Canaan, facing the perils of the Red Sea en route, because they wanted to RUN THEIR OWN SHEBANG. Always people have wanted to run their own shebang.

Let’s turn for a moment to France, whose general strike against the government refuses to die even though the government has offered a partial settlement in the way of a promise of higher wages. France’s troubles arise out of an inflation that keeps prices going up faster than wages. The people want more money to enable them to keep even with the game. The new government of France is trying to hold down government costs so as to check the inflation that is causing the trouble. As long as wages could be raised every time prices went up. It wasn’t too bad and nobody worried. But French prices have become so high that French goods can’t be sold outside France and France isn’t self-sufficient. It has to sell its goods abroad in order to live. Therein lies the rub. Eventually we all have to learn that only out of MORE PRODUCTION can we have more things that we can’t divide what isn’t produced. Usually we have to learn it the hard way. The French are learning it the hard way.

It’s so hard for ALL OF US to realize that a law to make everybody rich overnight won’t work. It seems like it OUGHT to work. But it won’t.




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Related links:

Nothing Is Remote To Us Any More | Dothan Eagle, Aug. 24, 1953

Neglected Treasure | August 25, 1953 editorial on Iran

The Revolt In Persia | The Advertiser, August 21, 1953



MOSSADEGH t-shirts — “If I sit silently, I have sinned”

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