Letters: Oct. 13, 1930

Hoover’s Dam

Sirs:

TIME usually well-informed makes two erroneous statements in its report of the Las Vegas, Nev. Boulder Dam celebration. In your issue of Sept. 29 you quote Secretary Wilbur saying, “I have the honor to name this dam after a great engineer who really started this greatest project of all time, the Hoover Dam.” If the Secretary said that he was mistaken. Arthur Powell Davis, then U. S. Commissioner of Reclamation, was the man who started the engineering investigations and made the first report urging a government-built dam in Boulder Canyon. Senator Hiram Johnson and Representative Phil Swing, co-authors of the Swing-Johnson Bill authorizing the construction of Boulder Dam, were the men who started and carried through the ten-year congressional fight which made possible Secretary Wilbur’s Silver Spike ceremony. Your footnote saying Herbert Hoover got seven affected states “to sign a treaty agreeing to build the dam” is also incorrect. The treaty negotiated by Mr. Hoover, the Colorado River compact signed November, 1922, not 1921, contains no agreement whatever to build Boulder Dam or any other dam. It merely divides Colorado River water between the upper and lower basin states. Boulder Dam is an important happening for the Southwest. I know you are desirous of having facts correctly stated.

JOHN L. BACON President Boulder Dam Association San Diego, Calif.

Michigan’s Couzens

Sirs:

The undersigned registered voters desire to know the political record of Michigan’s senior senator, James Couzens.

GEORGE F. WYLLIE CLELAND WYLLIE L. F. OUINING S. D. PORTER O. H. SCHLEMMER Ann Arbor, Mich.

Sirs:

We the undersigned registered voters of the State of Michigan would appreciate the publication in your magazine of the record of Senator Couzens of Michigan.

WILLARD L. DAYTON C. L. MCVAUGH RAY W. LABBITT CHAS. E. BROKAW ROGER M. ANTHONY Detroit, Mich.

The record of Senator James (“Jim”) Couzens of Michigan is as follows:

Born: at Chatham, Ont., Canada, Aug. 26, 1872.

Start in life: car-checker in the Michigan Central R. R. yards at Detroit.

Career: From his father’s small soap factory at Chatham he, aged 18, migrated to Detroit, became car-checker, then bill-clerk for the M. C. R. R. A. Y. Malcomsen, coaldealer, made him his bookkeeper at $75 a month. He married Margaret A. Manning of Detroit in 1898, who bore him one son, three daughters. In 1903

Malcomsen helped Henry Ford start his motor company but, ashamed of the venture, invested under Couzens’ name. He too invested—$900 savings, $100 borrowed from an aunt. Later Ford made him general manager. By 1914 he was drawing a $150,000-a-year salary, large dividends. The same year he advised, obtained Ford’s $s-a-day minimum wage. In 1915 he quarreled with Ford’s pacifism, resigned, sold his original $1,000 investment for a $30,000,000 check which for days he carried in his pocket, unbanked, to show friends. At that time he was Detroit’s first Street Railway Commission chairman. In 1916 he was police commissioner, in 1919 mayor. He vigorously established municipal street railways, longview public building programs, traffic signal lights (first city). When in November, 1922, Michigan’s Senator Truman Handy Newberry resigned under censure for excessive campaign expenditures, Mayor Couzens was appointed to the Senate vacancy. Elected for a six-year term in 1924, he is now the Republican nominee to succeed himself for another six years.

In Congress: He is known as an independent voter, a violent partisan, a dogged fighter, the Senate’s wealthiest member. He is most famed for his fiscal feud with Secretary of the Treasury Andrew William Mellon. He did not like the 1924 tax bill, wrote the Secretary so, was infuriated by a snippy reply from a Department subordinate. He put through the Senate a resolution to investigate the Bureau of Internal Revenue. This Bureau retaliated by reopening an old tax case against him and all minority Ford stockholders who had sold their shares. The Bureau charged the Senator owed the Government $10,000,000. He, vexed, cried sincerely: “I don’t give a damn about the $10,000,000, but (Continued on p. 8) I don’t want to lose!” He won his suit, donated his winnings to charity.

He voted for: Farm Relief, the Navy’s 15-Cruiser bill (1928), Tax Reduction, Reapportionment, the Jones (“Five & Ten”) Law (1929), the Tariff (1930).

He voted against: Farm Relief (1927), Charles Evans Hughes and John Johnston Parker for the U. S. Supreme Court (1930).

He votes Dry, drinks Wet.

In appearance, large, well-built, active, he has white, close-cut hair, a square-set jaw, glittering blue eyes behind pince-nez glasses. He dresses well, conservatively. His voice is hoarse, bluntly eloquent in committee, but weak and flustered on the Senate floor. He smokes, swears profusely.

Out of Congress: He lives modestly on Woodland Drive, N. W., when in Washington, drives a Ford coupe to the Capitol or to Burning Tree Golf Club (average score: 100). Outside Detroit he lovingly, bitterly maintains a failing farm, which he once offered rent-free to anyone who could make it pay. He likes poker.

Impartial Senate observers rate him thus: a hardheaded, rough, ruggedly sincere and able legislator who wants to be a regular Republican, but whose strong convictions often carry him to the insurgent ranks; a wealthy man who often votes against the desires of the wealthy, hence is called “the scab millionaire,” who has been only slightly softened by eight years of Washington social life.—ED. “Goodnight, dear heart”

Sirs:

In the article, “Modern Doggery,” under Animals (TIME, Sept. 29, p. 52), you quote an eight-line poem called (or dedicated to) “Little Pug.” You do not mention the origin of this stanza or name the author.

According to the Associated Press dispatches at the time of Mark Twain’s death, April 21, 1910, these verses were written by Mr. Clemens as an epitaph for the marble stone which marks the grave of his wife in a cemetery at Elmira, N. Y. The seventh line in the original version reads “Goodnight, dear heart,” which, perhaps, even Dr. Smith’s client thought inappropriate for a pomeranian.

PAUL W. STODDARD Hartford, Conn.

General Motors Research

Sirs:

In your Sept. 15 issue on p. 43 you have a footnote stating the fact that General Electric spent 17 years of research on its refrigerator, and did not put its product on the market until nine years after General Motors started marketing Frigidaires. Does not this by indirection cast doubt upon the thoroughness of General Motors’ research staff, largest industrial research staff in the country?

E. D. DOTY Advertising Manager Frigidaire Corp. Dayton, Ohio.

Upon General Motors’ capable research staff TIME meant to cast no aspersion, nor any reflection on famed Frigidaire. Under Charles F. Kettering, General Motors’ re-search laboratories also formulated Ethyl gasoline, adapted Dnco finish, will undoubtedly make many another contribution to U. S. industry.—ED. Rise of Slick Sirs:

In your issue of Aug. 25, reporting the death of Thomas B. Slick the Oklahoma oil operator, you stated that Slick was a “driller, mule skinner and roustabout.” Other magazines and many daily papers reporting the death of this rather remarkable man made similar statements and while the implication that he rose from a day laborer to the success he achieved as an operator is a very commendable one, the statement is not correct and I feel it worth while to call the matter to your attention.

I have known Slick since his early boyhood and know that he was entirely a self-made man, and that both he and his family were justly proud of that fact; but he never at any time in his career was a “teamster, tooldresser, mule-skinner, roustabout, or driller.” At an early age he was employed by the National Supply Company at Chanute, Kan. as a salesman and after holding this position for a time went to Oklahoma and engaged in what afterwards became his chief interest and enjoyment, the taking and blocking up of Oil and gas leases and having the land tested by drilling what is known in oil fields as “wildcat” wells. Slick always took more interest and got more pleasure in testing new territory than he did in drilling producing wells in proven territory. In his early career it was necessary for him to interest outside capital and frequently in new territory wells were drilled by others in which he was carried for an interest. In his later operations he frequently carried his friends. . . .

Slick was a tireless worker and never at any time felt himself above manual labor but as stated above, his earlier years were not spent “serving an apprenticeship as a driller,” etc., as stated in many of the reports of his death.

H. E. RUGH Clarion, Pa.

Well-Satisfied

Sirs:

Your quiet, businesslike survey and summary of the “Effects of a Groundswell” is one of the best pieces of journalism I have ever seen (TIME, Sept. 29). I congratulate you for putting (as usual) your finger upon the crucial point in the Wet-Dry excitement. Someone once said: “Congress is always ten years behind public opinion.” Yet nothing can be done about anything in this country before public attention is focused upon Congress to make it become selfconscious. . . . If the above aphorism is still accurate, you may have five or six more opportunities to chart the progress of the “Groundswell” as new Congresses are elected. That you will maintain your long, efficient view of Prohibition and other national problems is the confident trust and comfort of this well-satisfied subscriber.

J. MARSHALL THOMPKINS Philadelphia, Pa.

Dry Fess

Sirs:

. . . I have just seen your issue of Sept. 29 and on p. 17 I find this statement: “Ohio’s Senator Fess the Wet turned Dry who is ready to turn Wet again if necessary to hold his job.”

. . . I happen to be a son of Senator Fess, having resided in New York for the past six years, and, as far as his ever having been classified in the wet column is concerned, I can assure you that you are doing him a very gross injustice. As a matter of fact, he has been a sincere dry advocate during his entire lifetime. . . .

LOWELL FESS New York City

Wet Fenn

Sirs:

In the issue of TIME for Sept. 29, I find the following on p. 18:

“In Connecticut, a Wet was sure to be elected to the seat vacated by Dry Representative Fenn. Gain: i.”

This is the first time in a somewhat long public career that I have been characterized as a “Dry.” I am not a “Dry”; I have never been a “Dry,” and I believe fervently in the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. . . .

E. HART FENN Wethersfield, Conn.

Dryish Gore

Sirs:

. . . You blunder when you list Senator Gore as a Wet (TIME, Aug. 25). Senator Gore was nominated in the same election in which the very Dry Oklahoma Constitution was adopted and was twice re-elected as a bone Dry. . . . The Wet wing of the Democratic party of Oklahoma was squelched in the campaign of 1928. . . .

R. H. BRETT Ardmore, Okla.

So widespread was the impression that Nominee Gore had turned Wet that on Sept. 21 the Anti-Saloon League felt it necessary to publish a Dryish letter from him. In this letter he used the following weasel-words: “Should time and experience demonstrate the necessity for a change in the law, such change ought to be made by the friends of temperance rather than its enemies.”—ED.