new xterm and erase setting

[Harry Putnam <reader newsguy com>]

Mike doesn't seem to be paying attention to this somewhat dated
thread but in case anyone else is noticing.... it seems the erase
setting is different than previous xterms.  I get 
  erase = ^?
looking at stty -a output.  

I think this means that the backspace key in emacs -nw will not
function as expected (without some elisp correction) but will call
`help' instead.

Very disconcerting when coding at full speed.

One can set erase to ^H in .bash_profile or similar but then there is
the need to keep up with that setting when changing users or etc.

I'm guessing the old defualt was `erase = ^H' but not really sure.  I
don't see any settings in my rc files so apparently it didn't need any
setting before.