Limitation Policy

In TIME and in newspapers through the U. S., TIME, Inc. lately advertised that, at least until the end of 1930, no issue of TIME would exceed 80 pages (plus cover and color-inserts) in size. Of more than 200 comments on this announcement which have thus far been received from advertisers, the following are typical:

Sirs: It is reassuring to learn that you plan to limit the size of TIME to 80 pages. As an advertiser, I am equally enthusiastic over your decision. A larger paper would mean a less intimate one and, therefore, a less valuable one from the advertising standpoint. EDWARD P. BAILEY JR.

Bryant Heater & Mfg. Co. Cleveland, Ohio Sirs: As far as cover-to-cover readers are concerned, I believe they must always be a minority and that they should not be considered too seriously. Personally I like to see a good, fat, meaty magazine even though I do not get time to read it.

JOHN B. FLACK Kaletziki, Flack &Howard, Inc. Syracuse, N. Y. Vice President Flack errs. Investigations regularly show that more than 80% of TIME-readers are cover-to-cover readers. — ED. Sirs: As a weekly cover-to-cover reader of TIME, I am very glad indeed to see that you propose to limit the number of pages. You can give your advertisers more display in a limited number of pages than you can give them in double spreads in a magazine made up of innumerable pages. F. E. BARBOUR Beech-Nut Packing Co. Canajoharie, N.Y. Sirs: Being a cover-to-cover reader I am in favor of keeping the number of pages down. FRED A. ROBBINS, INC. Chicago, Ill.

Sirs: As an enthusiastic TIME reader, I do want to congratulate you on the limitation decision and your determination to keep TIME the short, snappy publication it now is. CITY OF WEST PALM BEACH West Palm Beach, Fla. Sirs: Your announcement to the effect that TIME will limit its pages to 80 per issue is wise. The issues have been few and far between during the past five years which I have not cover-to-covered. Incidentally, such a limit makes each advertising page more valuable.

FRANCIS JURASCHEK President Freystadt-Juraschek, Inc. New York City Sirs: By all means let’s have one magazine with full sails and a taut sheet-rope. THE SOUTHWICK Co. New York City Sirs: It takes some courage to limit the size of your publication. CLARENCE R. LINDNER San Francisco Examiner San Francisco, Cal. Sirs: It takes considerable courage, I imagine, to take such a stand, but as a reader and advertiser appreciate your policy and hope you will benefit by it. W. S. BASINGER Passenger Traffic Mgr. Union Pacific System Omaha, Neb. Sirs: In the opinion of Mr. Lillibridge, such a move is a “noble experiment.” HENRY ECKHARDT Executive Vice President Ray D. Lillibridge, Inc. New York City Sirs: It is the first time in u years in the agency business that I have seen an announcement by any publisher assuring advertisers that the publication will not be permitted to become so bulky that ads are buried. The greatest problem in advertising today is to get advertisements in magazines where they will actually be seen. I am sure that any advertiser derives far greater returns from an advertisement that is actually read by one hundred thousand people than by an ad reaching three million people — most of whom an do not even see it, and very few of whom actually read the copy. Therefore TIME is to be congratulated on its wisdom. HARM WHITE President The Harm White Co. Cleveland, Ohio Sirs: There is a need for a newsmagazine such as TIME which can be read from cover to cover in not more than two hours time. I congratulate you on your purpose to limit the number of your pages, and I do so both as a reader and as an advertiser. HUGO E. BIRKNER The Davey Tree Expert Co. Kent, Ohio Sirs: The adoption of a limitation policy regarding advertising for TIME seems to me to be holding out for that which is negative and which TIME is not. The most readable magazine in the world must go on expanding, become more positive. More interesting and more good ads are going to help. P. F. CHAMBERLAIN Virginia, Minn. Sirs: As a regular and interested reader I welcome your decision to limit TIME to 80 pages.

HOWARD A. HALLIGAN Vice President Western Electric Co., Inc. New York City

Sirs:

As reader, I vote unequivocally for limitation. As advertiser, I vote for visibility, but visibility is only the first step. I have experienced the power of space in TIME, and I believe the potency of that space dependent upon proportion and selection as psychological factors. Visibility is but the physical aspect of the same principle. L. E. FIRTH Vice President

The H. K. McCann Co.

New York City

Sirs:

I do not think the size of TIME will matter so long as you maintain your present editorial policy of terseness. that It is not the number of pages, in my opinion, that counts, but it is the style in which the text is written. Keep that style and you are safe, and take all the advertising you can get. JOHN CONDON President The Condon Co., Inc. Tacoma, Wash. Sirs: I believe from the reader’s standpoint TIME should not exceed 60 pages. THE PRATT & WHITNEY AIRCRAFT Co. Hartford, Conn.

Voohnmad Sirs: Surely the signature to the enclosed is ficticious. Spell it backward and consider the result in connection witht he context of the letter. It cannot be merely a coincidence. It smacks of the recent Harvard hymn. I hope you didn’t print it knowingly. M. L. HAVEY New York City

The name, unsuspectingly printed by TIME, was “R. E. Voohnmad,” signed to a letter (TIME, Sept. 2) ” — about Waco, Tex., and “roasting ear juice”. — ED. Lehigh Valley Too

Sirs: TIME seems to have been content to follow the New York World in omitting the Lehigh Valley from the list of railroads permitting smoking in dining cars. Fortunately, however, for the Lehigh Valley, the World’s Bureau of Accuracy and Fair Play promptly corrected the omission. Will TIME do as much? More than a year ago, the Lehigh Valley announced on menu cards on the Black Diamond, the New Yorker and other trains that diners might smoke should they so desire. N. W. PRINGLE Passenger Traffic Manager Lehigh Valley Railroad Co. New York City Further evidence of the spread of smoking among U. S. women: last week a new rule was passed at Joliet Penitentiary giving women inmates smoking rights equal to men. — ED.

Tomato Trucks

Sirs: “Soup” editorial* was nearly as fine as the soup; for the soup is perfect, but the editorial is faulty. You describe the farmers, “swinging their sweaty horses in an arc.” Time was that such a thing was true, but Jersey farmers, growing the wonderful “J.T.D.” tomatoes, “bigger and better” every year, have mostly discarded horses. Where, years ago, wagon loads of 80 to 100 baskets, stretched for two miles, and slowly wended their way toward the receiving platform, now motor trucks with loads of 200 to 600 baskets occupy that length of street and “zip” to the platform, unload, “zip” away again for another load. “J.T.D.” gave humanity a big lift when he brought the idea of canned soup to a reality, and both he, and the farmers are reaping the golden harvest as a result. FREDERICK T. ROBERTS Philadelphia, Pa.

Jam-Roll Sirs: TIME, Aug. 26, p. 22.

Scouts not only gave Baron Baden-Powell a Rolls-Royce, which he dubbed “Jam-roll” (be cause of the jamboree and one of the makers) but also an Eccles trailer-caravan, a painting of himself and a cheque for £2,750. All gifts were made possible by international Scout contributions of one penny each. TIME omitted: Absence of Italian Scouts, dissolved by Mussolini. Yorker — Presence America’s oldest Boy Scout, a New Yorker — E. K. Pietsch, 71, 18 years a Scout, who has always refused promotion. He was accompanied by his wife, 70. … In reference to review of The Dance of Life, TIME, Sept. 2, p. 64, Paramount crossed the palm of Havelock Ellis with a cheque for $10,000 for use of the title. ROBERT JEROME BOYLAN III East St. Louis, Ill.

Economist Jenks Sirs: I wish to call your attention to an omission from your “Milestones” column of the death of a great man, Dr. Jeremiah W. Jenks, president of Alexander Hamilton Institute and an internationally known economist on Aug. 25. It so happened that his picture was published in an advertisement of the Alexander Hamilton Institute in your magazine for that week. PHILIP SOBEN Brooklyn, N. Y.

Courtesy Sirs: A careful perusal of all reports of Graf Zeppelin maneuvers fails to reveal the arrangement by which U. S. sailors, soldiers, marines, hangars, et cetera are used to assist a private commercial undertaking. Will TIME testify? FRANCIS J. D ‘AMANDA Rochester, X. Y. The U. S. served the Graf Zeppelin out of courtesy to a distinguished visitor; also because the U. S. Navy is an interested student of zeppelining. — ED.

Great Lakes Aircraft Sirs: Having been an enthusiastic reader of TIME for several years, and the foremost advocate of its value as an advertising medium in this organization, it was with great dismay that I read the singularly inept reference to Great Lakes Aircraft Corporation which appeared in the Sept. 9 issue under the heading of “Aeronautics.” . . . Were your correspondents as adept at gathering facts as they seem to be at ferreting out middle names, the following might easily have been unearthed: i) That Cleveland is justly proud of Great Lakes Aircraft Corporation, and would rather have as its representative in the aircraft manu facturing field one such strong, well-financed, well-managed concern than a score of the so-“called “manufacturers” which, mushroom-like, fill barns and hangars in other cities, build tiny “factories” on overenthusiastic local capital. 2) That the “abandoned” Glenn L. Martin plant was at the time it was taken over one of the two or three largest and best-equipped aircraft factories in the world, and that subsequent additions and improvements made by this company at a cost of over $300,000 have considerably improved its position in this respect. 3) That the “onetime Army flier (Benjamin Frederick Castle) who went into banking was, in fact, the former Chief of the Control Board of the U. S. Army Air Service, Personal Representative of the Chief of the U. S. Army Air Service on the Liquidation Committee in France, Air Attache to the U. S. Embassy at Paris (the first ever appointed to such a post), Governor of the Aero Club of America, Treasurer of the National Aeronautic Association, an international banker and authority on conditions in the Eastern Baltic Republics, and a West Point graduate retiring from the Army in 1919 with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. 4) That the “onetime Navy aircraft engineer” (Holden Chester Richardson) was, in fact, a Captain in the Navy, Chief of the Material Division, Bureau of Aeronautics, U. S. Navy Department, and responsible for all Naval aircraft design: one of the designers of the NC seaplanes used in the first trans-Atlantic flight attempt, land pilot of the NC3 on that flight; largely responsible for the catapults which put aviation into the Fleet; and recognized as the foremost international authority on the design of seaplane floats and flying boat hulls. That he is not “the Chief Designer,” but is employed in the capacity of Director of Engineering by Allied Motor Industries, Inc., parent company of Great Lakes Aircraft Corporation, thus making his services available to the latter corporation as well as others in the Allied group.* 5) That the Great Lakes plant now employs over 800 men. . . . 6) That Great Lakes is a recognized source of supply for the U. S. Army and Navy, and was recently awarded a contract by the latter for some $750,000 worth of airplanes, floats, and spares. 7) That Great Lakes does indeed produce amphibions (note spelling) and cabin ships in “small numbers”—in fact, no numbers at all, although it has built an experimental amphibion. . . . 8) That, unless the basis for comparison be automobiles or some similar commodity, the present rate of production on the well-known Great Lakes Sport Trainer could hardly be classed as “small numbers,” since it stands at four complete airplanes per day. . . . Twenty ships a week is considered a high production figure. … G. R. HUNTER

Advertising Manager Great Lakes Aircraft Corp. Cleveland, Ohio

To Adman Hunter, thanks for a complete description of Great Lakes Air-craft Corp.—ED.

Life History Sirs: Probably you will be interested to learn how a copy of each issue of your magazine gets around down here: After spending a week in the public reading room of the Baltimore Y. M. C. A. it comes to me. My wife and I read it from cover to cover. It is then sent to Cumberland, Md., to my wife’s home, here it is read by her mother, father and three sisters. It then goes next door to the minister’s, where he, his wife and daughters read it. It is then sent to Huntington, W. Va., where it is read by a man and his wife—and from there, well, I do not know where it goes, but the chances are that TIME’S journeys do not even then end. Summing it up: A safe estimate is that at least 50 people read the magazine in the public reading room, after which an even dozen read it in rotation.

Not a bad circulation for one copy of TIME.

HOWARD L. BRADLEY Baltimore, Md.

No Pea-Pushing Sirs: In answer to Lawyer Curtis J. Quinby’s criticism of “Swan Upping” as being a silly thing done by otherwise intelligent and progressive people: Granted that it is a foolish, though traditional, ceremony . . . what price a Britisher pushing a peanut up Ben Nevis with his nose as has been recently achieved up Pike’s Peak. . . . No, Sir . . . not on your life. I seem to have heard also of publicity loving individuals who like to dance a marathon from Worcester to Boston, Mass, and also . . . what about those others who, perhaps on the spur of the moment endeavour to spend the rest of their lives on the top of a flagpole. DANIEL J. NEAL Late of London, England Boston, Mass.

Whale Watcher Sirs: In your issue of Sept. 9, on p. 60, you say there is no record of whales having been observed in actual copulation. By an odd coincidence, the third column on that same page carries the picture of the employer of a man who does state that he has seen whales under just such conditions. On the estate of Col. Green at South Dartmouth, Mass., is moored, perpetually in a concrete basin, the whaling bark Charles W. Morgan, said to be the last of the old New Bedford whalers, her only rival for that distinction having been lost during the filming of Down to the Sea in Ships. The Charles W. Morgan has been, through the interest of Col. Green and others, made into a whaling museum, rigged and outfitted as she was when she was built and made her first voyage in 1849. Aboard her as master is Capt. George Fred Tilton, whose autobiography, Cap’n George Fred, was published by Doubleday, Doran in 1928. He is the last of the old whaling skip pers. His book is interesting, but his lectures are far more so, and intimate talks with him (aided and abetted by certain refreshments) even more so still. He describes, apparently accurately, and certainly graphically, the intimate home life of the whale. He jibes with the sharks you mention in saying that killing whales at that time is extremely easy (though he deplores the necessity!). By the minuteness of detail I would judge that Captain George Fred was a close observer. . . . R. G. M. Flushing, L. I. Trumpeter

Sirs: Being a TIME-saving reader, convention I have failed to find mention of the convention of of D.O. O. K. (Dramatic Order of Knights of Khorassan), of the Knights of Pythias Lodge, which met at Win nipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Aug. 13, 14 and 15.

My particular interest is selfish, since I play trumpet in the Ben Hur No. 131, D.O. K.K. of Tulsa, Okla., and our band of 31 pieces won first honors in the International Band Contest at Winnipeg. We won the same honors at the last biennial convention at Fort Worth. Tex., in 1927, and confidently expect to win the same at Cincinnati in 1931. . . . FOREST R. REES Tulsa, Okla.

Money’s Worth Sirs: The little article on p. 43 of your Aug. 26 issue entitled “On Tisha B’Ab” is a jewel of descriptive writing. In it the writer displays not only an ability to write but a thorough knowledge of Jewish history and an understanding heart. This is much more than I expected to find in a News magazine. It is delightful to occasionally get more than one’s money’s worth. Thanks. J. R. LIFTON Denver, Colo.

*TIME prints no “editorials” in the accepted sense of that word, meaning expressions of opinion. The subscriber means the story about Campbell Soup’s new Chicago factory (TIME, Sept 2).

* To the Allied group (Great Lakes Aircraft, Heeney Motor Co., Van Sicklen Corp., Weatherproof Body Corp., and Cirrus Engine Co.) was last week added American Aeronautical Corp., U. S. makers of Savoia-Marchetti planes.