Letters: Japanese Ears

Sirs:

Tycoon (Japanese: Dai—Great; Kun—Noble One, or Prince) used by the latter Shoguns of the Tokugawa Line descended from leasu (Seventeenth Century) and up to the abdication of Tokugawa Yoshinobu, Oct. 14, 1867.

Under the Tokugawas men in trade (hei-min) were classed in the lowest social order—lowest even than actor. Respectfully submit your “rubber tycoon” or your “baseball tycoon” reads very amusing to Japanese ears.

I. NAKAMURA

Monterey, Calif.

Silly

Sirs:

A=ARGENTINA

B=BRAZIL

C=CHILE

TIME, Nov. 19, page 22.

I like you, TIME, especially when you are silly.

JAMES J. HOBBS

Boston, Mass.

Speed

Sirs:

TIME is beyond all doubt the correct name for the only newsmagazine in these United States. I nearly fell off my comfortable and well balanced chair (and the whole phrase is meant literally) when I opened up the Nov. 12 issue of TIME this afternoon and found the complete election results, covered in your usual highly interesting style. That was an example of real speed on your part—speed I had not thought probable. TIME certainly makes full use of time. . . .

D. M. LAWSON

Publisher

The Recorder

Hampton, Iowa

TIME acknowledges with gratitude the comment of Subscriber Lawson and 26 other subscribers upon the speed with which its post-election issue was produced and delivered. To Printer R. R. Donnelley & Sons Co. and the U. S. Postal Service, all praise.—ED.

Victim of Bigotry

Sirs:

In your issue of Nov. 12 under “Governors” you comment on Gov. George. W. P. Hunt of Arizona as follows: “Unique among all U. S. political executives is Democrat George Wylie Paul Hunt.” Then follows a farrago of inanities of personal description such as “once strong as an ox, now 69 and bald as a turtle,” etc. and “No U. S. mustache is more famed than his. Once frowsy and walrusy, it is now smartly waxed.” How, in the name of common sense does this latter connect up with or throw light upon his uniqueness? When the editor, or is it office boy? writes these biographical sketches does he not have available any significant data? Every time TIME has referred to this Grand Old Man of Arizona it has focused attention to these features rather than to the great contribution Hunt has made to civilization.

Governor Hunt is known as a great humanitarian. As governor he has never signed the death warrant of any fellow human being. He transformed the State prison from a place of horror into a university, had the prisoners examined medically and treated in line with modern scientific knowledge. He developed a splendid system of roads throughout the State. He made the big corporations obey the safety laws in the mines and reduced mine accidents to a negligible quantity. He has been absolutely fair to labor. He has been constructive and forward-looking.

Governor Hunt has been absolutely honest. I put this statement in a paragraph by itself for it is outstanding. In all the six terms as Governor, there has never been the least suspicion ever breathed against Hunt in this connection.

I know the man personally and have had dealings with him. When he looks at one with those keen eyes of his they seem to penetrate into one’s very soul. His sincerity and honesty and kindliness make one instinctively like him and feel confidence in him. He makes one feel that greatness is the common heritage of man.

It will be a long time before Arizona, or America for that matter, will see his equal as a real democrat.

The man whose favorite poet is Bobby Burns, who loved simple things, whom Woodrow Wilson appointed Minister to Siam, fell a victim in the battle against bigotry, fell fighting, but as great in defeat as in victory. His waxed mustache doesn’t matter, it’s his heart that counts.

HENRY FLURY

Washington, D. C.

Few of Gov. Hunt’s great achievements have been recorded in TIME because most of them antedate TIME. But TIME takes pride in having shared with the Hunt mus tache the honor of making George W. P. Hunt known to hundreds of thousands of non-Arizonians. TIME subscribers have been well prepared to relish Subscriber Flury’s able description of Gov. Hunt’s unique record and personality. — ED.

Victim of Science

Sirs:

Under Milestones, TIME Nov. 5, page 52, I notice the report of Dr. Albert Schneider’s sudden death. It might interest you to know that Dr. Schneider, an excellent friend and collaborator of mine, like Dr. Hideyo Noguchi, was a victim of science. His untimely death was probably due to too much self-experimentation. One of his last letters was written to me on Oct. 25 where lie complained of acute symptoms of hyperthroidism due to self-experimentation with thyroid and parathyroid substance and with some vegetable extracts. He died two days after writing this letter, on Oct. 27. The news of his death was most distressing to his friends and colleagues.

C.G. COLIN

Director

Central Chemical Laboratory

Dept. of Pharmacology

Mexico, D. F.

“Telephotograph”

Sirs:

On p. 48 of your issue of Oct. 8 you refer to Hiram R. Mallinson sending his picture by “Photogram” to various silk buyers throughout the country. Undoubtedly, you will have occasion from time to time to refer again to Photograms and Telephotographs in your valuable magazine. For this reason I am taking the liberty to explain the difference between the two.

A Photogram is a communication to the addressee from the sender written or typed in black ink and delivered in photographic facsimile. The rate for this service is only one and a half times the full telegram rate.

The Telephotograph is a photographic reproduction by wire of documents, pictures, drawings or any article or matter which can be photographically reproduced. . . .

H. L. HAMILTON

Advertising Manager

Western Union Telegraph Co.,

New York City.

Tim Thrift & Wife

Sirs:

Is it because you are prejudiced against Direct Mail Advertising that you failed to record the election in Philadelphia in October of Tim Thrift as President of the Direct Mail Ass’n. and then print the election of Mr. Smith as Pres. of the Assn. of National Advertisers? (As you might know Mr. Thrift has also held War office.)

TIM THRIFT’S WIFE and a reader of TIME and a booster since its first number.

Elmira, N. Y.

Yucatan Special

Sirs:

I think it was the ex-Kaiser who said he admired above all two things in the United States: the Niagara Falls and Roosevelt. Had it then been his privilege to have read TIME, he would have included your marvelous magazine among his American predilections. . . .

I am a constant reader of at least a dozen European, Spanish-American and North-American magazines and invariably the first one I read is TIME. . . .

Give us a little more about Mexico, and should you at any time decide to send a special correspondent to Yucatan in order to give Americans first-hand information on our prehistoric Ruins, I’ll gladly see that he gets a special train for his wanderings in the Peninsula.

B. Rios FRANCO

Merida, Yucatan, Mexico

TIME will remember well Subscriber Franco’s promise of a special train for its Yucatan correspondent.—ED.

Alcohols

In the following letter, Subscriber Presnell corrects TIME’s political writer’s errors concerning alcohols (TIME Oct. 22):

Sirs:

. . . Grain alcohol has the formula of C2Ho2OH and is prepared by permitting yeast to act upon sugar. The alcohol thus formed is separated from most of the other substances in the solution by distilling. The name—grain alcohol—is due to the fact that some grain is the cheapest and therefore the most usual source of the sugar.

Wood alcohol has the formula CH2OH. It is made by the destructive distillation of wood. Hence the name. It cannot be made by denaturizing grain alcohol, as TIME suggests. The distillation of grain alcohol involves nothing but the isolation of already created grain alcohol. The distillation of wood alcohol involves the creation of the alcohol through the breaking down of more complex compounds.

Denatured alcohol, with which TIME seems to have confused wood alcohol, is made by adding to grain alcohol, to permit it to escape taxation, some substance which renders it unfit to drink. The denaturent is not always a poison. Pyridine, a common denaturent, does nothing worse than emit a vile odor.

TIME mentions, also, that “hearty drinkers of wood alcohol are killed by paralysis of the nervous system.” That is not absolutely true. The action of wood alcohol is more extensive, and death may be the result of its action on some other part of the organism.

Incidentally, while methyl and ethyl alcohols are best known, they are not the sole members of the alcohol family, which includes a large number of others. All of these are poisonous. Chemists, unable to account for the fact that ethyl alcohol alone is nonpoisonous, think that this may be due less to its chemical structure than to the fact that it is always present in the intestines, due to natural fermentation. This minute quantity of ethyl alcohol has caused organisms to build up a specific resistance to this one member of the alcohol family.

FRANK GILMORE PRESNELL

Chillicothe, Ohio.