April 1959 page 2

NEWS AND VIEWS

The Railroad Retirement Board recently reviewed its
benefit rolls to see how many females were confounding the
actuaries by extending their longevity past the 100-year
mark. The Board reported that it was still sending
monthly checks to seven railroad widows or mothers who
qualify as centenarians. The youngest is an even 100 and
the oldest is 105. That should give wives of railroaders
a distant goal worth trying for. Any pension plan is a
bargain if you can collect monthly checks for 40 years
after retirement.

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It now seems to be a certainty that Interstate 85,
which is fast replacing U. S. 29, will be routed north of
Gastonia. That will mean the fourth crossing of the P & N's
North Carolina Division within its 26-mile length - over
near Charlotte, under the Belmont branch, over the McAden-
ville branch, and probably under again near Gastonia's
city limits. In South Carolina there are only two
crossings so far, both over.

* * * * *

It is surprising how scarce good industrial sites can
become in the midst of thousands of acres of vacant land.
Haphazard, unplanned growth has left some cities in P&N
land with nothing of quality to sell site-seeking indus-
tries. This sad situation furnishes a good argument for
revising zoning laws which permit the construction of
houses in industrial and commercial zones but do not permit
the construction of plants or warehouses in residential
zones. Thus, the home owner has protection from industrial
encroachment, but industry has no protection from residen-
tial encroachment. As a consequence a great deal of pro-
perty best suited for industry because of its location near
or along a railroad has been taken over for housing. The
result: no good sites left for industry. Cities would do
well to consider ways and means of protecting what sites
they still have from going the way of so much other property
which could have created hundreds or thousands of jobs and
shared materially in carrying the property tax burden.