My stomach turned as I considered the sickening ramifications of the recent letter to the editor submitted by Ruth Corene McDaniel, president of the Illinois Cosmetology Association Inc., titled Unlicensed practices must stop.

To recap, she was the person who argued that SIUC students featured in the Sept. 25 Daily Egyptian story Entrepreneurs turn spare time into spare cash are criminals.

The low-life gangsters she was referring to are the hard-working people trying to pay their way through school by cutting hair and doing nails out of their homes or dorm rooms without a license.

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McDaniel cites an Illinois statutory law which she and a board of other professionals drafted in an attempt at making sure no one gets an unprofessional dye or nail job.

We thank her for this, because we all know how embarrassing green hair can be and the emotional distress it can cause which nowadays could lead to a multi-million dollar lawsuit.

Reading McDaniel’s diatribe reminded me of an inspiring story I once read. It was about a jobless woman in a metropolitan area who would bake muffins at home. Every morning she would put them in a wagon and go from business to business selling them to a supportive network of people who thought her muffins were wonderful.

Eventually, the word about her quality muffins got around, and the woman became popular. She was baking a large number of muffins and had a sizable clientele. Some might even argue that she was cutting into the local licensed professional muffin bakers’ business.

Mysteriously, the woman was soon greeted with a cease-and-desist order from the FDA because her kitchen had not received and passed health inspections. It just so happened that to pass these inspections, she would have had to install a multi-thousand dollar oven and kitchen cabinet area.

This woman was barely making enough money from the muffins to live on. There was no way she could afford the remodeling costs.

The FDA’s prompt execution of justice is a fine example of a valuable law hard at work to protect people from a potential tainted muffin or a potentially bad dye job if you will. By the way, if you believe that, then let me know, because I can get you a great deal on some arid swamp land in Florida.

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The muffin-baking woman’s customers in the area raised the money for the remodeling of her kitchen, and her business continued and grew much to the dismay of some cruel area professionals.

As Americans, it is our duty to see that the unprofessional entrepreneurs of our country are not oppressed by unjust laws enacted by our government because of the efforts of cutthroat lobbyists. Each of us who ignores this oppression ultimately is responsible for its effect on the spirit of our nation.

If I want to get a shoeshine from the guy at the airport who is working his ass off for peanuts, I damn well better be able to. Why? Because it is the never-say-die spirit of such petty unprofessional criminals that makes me proud to live in a country where anything is possible, and where even the poorest man can have a dream of something better.

I would beg you not to allow your government to steal the hopes and aspirations of the muffin bakers, shoe shiners and home- hair dyers of this country. There is a fundamental inalienable right at the foundation of the U.S. Constitution called the pursuit of happiness, and when one person’s constitutional freedom gets trampled upon by the cleated feet of bogus law, all of our civil rights as Americans get punched full of holes.