Heated Exchange

As its basic purpose, the National Exchange Club (about 1,500 chapters with 100,000 members) seeks to promote "an exchange of ideas." Last week Exchange's biggest state, California (165 chapters and 6,000 members), was in an uproar over some ideas which national headquarters found unexchangeable.

In Menlo Park, near San Francisco, the local Exchange Club two years ago initiated a Shanghai-born, Stanford-trained engineering executive: Robert U. M. Ting, 35. The Stockton chapter took in Richard Wong, 40, a San Francisco-born gift-shop operator, after hearing a speech on his wartime service as a U.S. Army liaison officer with the Chinese Nationalists. Both were popular; Wong served for a year as president of the Stockton Exchange Club. But when national headquarters in Toledo heard about Ting and Wong, it demanded their expulsion. Reason: Exchange's charter limits membership to "male, white business and professional men."

Furious about the demand from Toledo, Menlo Park voted 30 to 1 to give up its charter. Stockton, which voted 31 to 2 to defy the order, was suspended. The members of both chapters were invited to join the Lions, Rotary and other service clubs. Last week San Francisco's Golden Gate Exchange Club, the largest in California, which has only white members, decided to quit the national organization and to plan a regional revolt at a meeting this week of delegates from other California chapters. Said Golden Gate's President Mark Nusbaum: "Racial discrimination is un-American."

In Toledo, Exchange's national secretary--broad, greying Herold Harter, who organized it almost single-handed nearly 40 years ago and runs it much the same way--roared angrily: "What in hell is all this fuss about a Chinaman in Menlo Park?" Harter, who is proud of Exchange's sponsorship of citizenship programs and Constitution Week, insisted: "We haven't got anything against Chinese or Negroes or any other race. They're just not eligible . . . Why in hell haven't you got the right to choose with whom you and your wife can associate?" As for the Golden Gate chapter, which led a losing fight two years ago to change the all-white policy, he snapped: "It's 95% Jewish."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.