Letters, May 17, 1937

Townsend’s Pup

Sirs:

Indiana’s sportsman Governor, Cliff Townsend, had a little airedale pup, which would put Kansas’ climbing coon hound Rudd [TIME, April 12] to shame.

Governor Townsend’s airedale, an excitable and ambitious dog, chased a ‘possum into a corn field and up an apple tree. Undaunted, the airedale jumped up to a crotch in the tree, followed the ‘possum out on a limb and leaped to the ground after the ‘possum. A little out of wind, the dog scrambled up, chased the ‘possum, caught him and brought him back to the Governor. . . .

TRISTRAM COFFIN

Director

State House News Bureau

State of Indiana

Indianapolis, Ind.

Berlin Skinner

Sirs:

I am having trouble to get my TIME, an old reader of six years or more. I am enclosing the address of the newsdealer on Potsdamer Platz who was skinning me alive with a charge of Reichsmark .90 a copy. Can’t you make it hot for that guy, or is he immune with such robbery?

REINHOLD EBERLE

Berlin

Principally as a convenience to traveling subscribers, 4,000 copies of TIME are rushed to Europe each week, reaching British and usually French newsstands while the same issue is still on sale in New York City. In England, where the office of the European distributor is located, the price is everywhere 9d. (18¢). On the Continent a few shopkeepers charge what they can get, unfortunately are not subject to TIME’S regulation. European readers who wish may have TIME sent to them direct from the Circulation Office at 350 East 22nd Street, Chicago, Ill. for $7 a year.— ED.

Hopper for Box

Sirs:

I have read with great interest your article on the opening of Great Lakes navigation under Business & Finance in TIME, April 26, but take exception to your description of the movement of iron ore from mine to vessel. Obviously, no steam shovel or mine skip could load ore into a box car, as is suggested by your statement: “. . . box cars crawl out of the ore pits and stock piles toward the lake ports. . . .” Actually, 75-ton hopper cars are used for this purpose. You also state: “There each car is clamped by a cradle, lifted and dumped into hoppers. . . .” Unless startling innovations have been installed since I left the Great Lakes region two years ago, this is also inaccurate. The hopper cars are run out on the dock a few at a time, and the ore dumped into the pockets by opening the hopper bottoms of the cars. The ore goes, whenever a freighter is ready for it, from the pockets into the hold via steel spouts hinged to the sides of the dock. Cardumpers such as you mention are, however, used to load coal into these same freighters at lower lake ports.

JAMES PICKANDS II

New Haven, Conn.

Madden’s Words

Sirs:

In your issue of April 26, p. 15, you quote me as saying “‘This,’ he exulted, ‘means the solution of industrial peace.'” What compensating advantage is there to you in reporting me as saying something which I did not say and which no adult literate person would say?

J. WARREN MADDEN

Chairman

National Labor Relations Board

Washington, D. C.

Not all reporters at Chairman Madden’s first big press conference after the Supreme Court’s favorable decision on the Wagner Act heard exactly alike. The New York Herald Tribune recorded his statement: “This means the solution of industrial peace. It will not be necessary henceforth to have strikes to establish the right of labor unions to recognition for collective bargaining.” New York Times: “This [decision] means industrial peace.” New York News: “This Supreme Court decision means industrial peace for America!”—ED.

To-Do

Sirs:

About the Duck Hill double-lynching report and picture [TIME, April 26]:

We of the South might possibly handle our own personal problems with, what shall we say, a heavy hand. And you of the East? Black Legion? Of the West? California Kidnap Lynchings? Tar and Feather parties? Of the North and Midwest? Milk Spillings and Strike Riots? Sho you-all don’t mention those.

Didn’t see a picture of the dead white man, shot in the back, cause of all the todo. Whyn’t you print that? . . .

E. D. BARGE

Atlanta, Ga.

Mississippi Shudders

Sirs:

TIME deserves congratulations for giving the facts of the Duck Hill lynchings simply and dispassionately. Many biased Northern journals will jump at hasty conclusions anent this lawless act, falling into the common error of generalizing from too few cases.

Actually, the mob crowd was in number (using TIME’S estimate of 500) less than .00025 of the population of Mississippi. Fair-minded TIME-readers will suspect that a vast majority of the remaining .99975 shuddered at this ghastly thing, which is the truth.

It is no more logical to deduce that the dastardly deed at Duck Hill typifies the spirit of Mississippi than to conclude, on the basis of gang killings and torture slayings, that all New Yorkers are murder-minded.

L. HARDEE

Sandersville, Miss.

Credit to Brooks

Sirs:

Whoever credits “the old clothing company” [Hart Schaffner & Marx] referred to on p.

75 of the April 19 issue of TIME with being the “first in the trade to adopt an ‘all-wool’ policy (1900)” and “first with the camel’s hair coat (1912)” is not, apparently very well-founded in the history of the ready-made clothing business.

Brooks Brothers, established nearly three quarters of a century prior to 1887 and, like Johnny Walker, “still going strong,” has never within the memory of any living New Yorker, sold anything for wool which was not “all-wool.”

Moreover I have on my desk a Brooks Brothers catalog, put out in the spring of 1908, with a photograph of a camel’s hair ulster as part of its regular ready-made stock. I was sufficiently interested in the matter to try to verify my recollection that the material was indeed camel’s hair and, with the co-operation of their Woolens Department, I ascertained that the piece-goods from which they were cut in those days came from Jaeger’s, in Austria, were 100% pure camel’s hair, and that Brooks Brothers were the only clothing manufacturers in this country at that time to whom Jaeger’s sold goods in the piece.

Lots of “firsts” are frequently claimed by people who have more self-assertiveness than actual knowledge of affairs, and I would wager that many a one in the men’s wear business, no matter by whom it is now claimed, can be traced right back to Madison Avenue & 44th Street or Broadway corner 22nd Street.

ALBERT S. CAMPBELL

Dumont, N. J.

All credit to Brooks Brothers, swank old Manhattan retailers. Hart Schaffner & Marx’s records were set for the wholesale clothing trade.—ED.

Wyzanski v. Davis

Sirs:

In your report of the proceedings had before the U. S. Supreme Court, in the Associated Press case (TIME, April 19), you refer to the “brilliant legal argument” made by John W. Davis, attorney for the AP; no reference whatsoever was made as to counsel for the respondent. I was present in the bar section of the Court room during the submission of the case and heard the carefully prepared, and if I may borrow the expression, “brilliant legal argument” of one Charles E. Wyzanski, counsel for the Guild; I also listened to the loosely-worded “oration” delivered by John W. Davis in behalf of his client.

I am not personally acquainted with either Mr. Davis, or Mr. Wyzanski and I have no interest in the outcome of this case; but, in the interest of fair play, and as a lawyer, I do believe that, if the ability displayed at this hearing by the respective counsel for the parties were to be weighed, in the light of “equal justice under law,” the palm would undoubtedly go to Charles E. Wyzanski.

EDWARD H. LANGE

Hicks, Dickerson & Lange

Laredo, Tex.

“Kill It With a Sword”

Sirs:

Have ye Editors joined the ancient and dishonorable order of TIME-killers? Since my first discovery of TIME in 1925, I’ve been a devotee. Since the Depression, my reading has been intermittent but still avid.

With the last months of 1936, I thought I felt boredom creeping into my former unrefined enjoyment. Your stodgy treatment of the Woman of the Year made boredom too mild a word for what I felt.

But a long love dies slowly; and I would not admit, even to myself, that the “wrong” was entirely with TIME. I thought something had happened to me. It was as if a trusted yardstick appeared to shrink. So, I’ve checked myself by other reading. In the midst of TIME I pick up something else—anything else. A former impossibility has become a habit.

Is TIME being neglected for FORTUNE or LIFE? Do you need new blood—bright young men and clever young ladies who can write irresistibly of any subject? Or does too much advertising clutter up the reading matter until one is bogged down?

Whatever the cause, if TIME must die, for the sake of all that’s dramatic, kindly kill it with a sword. Let it not be lamented with wagging head that “TIME passed on” but give the mourners an opportunity to stand at attention and salute the last number while we repeat with pride: “TIME marches ON.”

MARGUERITE HAMLETT

Groveland, Fla.

TIME, never more full of good blood, shudders at the thought of death. Do other readers agree that since late 1936, boredom has crept in? If so, please give counsel.—ED.

Unto the Least

Sirs:

In the April 12 issue, TIME published a letter from Mr. B. Palmer Lewis representing the Christian Science Committee on Publication for the State of New York, in which he quoted a statement from Mr. Howard Chandler Christy testifying that, after partial blindness, Mr. Christy’s sight was restored 28 years ago through Christian Science.

Just about the time when Mr. Howard Chandler Christy’s blindness is alleged to have been overcome, and his sight restored through Christian Science, Dr. Park Lewis of Buffalo, N. Y., a noted ophthalmologist, was busy with the formation of an organization now known as the National Society for the Prevention of Blindness. Dr. Park Lewis is vice president of both this Society and the International Association for Prevention of Blindness which he was active in establishing at The Hague in 1929. We have asked him to comment on the letter of Mr. B. Palmer Lewis, and it occurs to us that you may wish to publish the reply which is enclosed herewith.

LEWIS H. CARRIS

Managing Director

National Society for the

Prevention of Blindness

New York City

My dear Mr. Carris: I have your letter with the clipping from TIME, April 12, in which Mr. B. Palmer Lewis cites the case of a noted artist who was cured of blindness through the ministrations of a practitioner of Christian Science. He urges this as a reason for opposing the employment of well-known and universally accepted measures to prevent the blindness due to birth infections [TIME, March 22]. The instance cited is as irrelevant to the prevention of blindness in infants as is the popularity of the artist or the names of prominent people whom he has painted. It is important only as it is misleading and might obstruct essential health measures.

It would appear in reading it carefully that the facts as noted in this case were accurately described, that blindness did exist during a number of months and that sight was restored as promptly and as completely as the writer states. The condition is not one infrequently met in medical practice and the treatment employed was almost precisely that followed by any intelligent and qualified doctor of medicine under like circumstances.

There is but one condition under which the symptoms described with the prompt restoration of sight are found. It is often characterized by the numbness referred to either in the legs or other parts of the body. It is known as psychic or mind blindness. It is purely a mental and functional condition in which no organic structural change is present. It is not even a very uncommon condition and no one thinks of treating it in any other way than by influencing the mind of the victim of this obsession.

When the person so affected is impressed with the belief that his sight will be restored even if it has been lost for a long time, it comes back again no matter how this belief is conveyed to him. A positive assurance made by the person in whom he has faith will usually effect a cure. A typical instance of this is described in the little booklet, “What You Should Know About Eyes,” forming one of the National Health Series published by Funk & Wagnalls Co.

Very different, however, is the condition of the baby’s eyes which the health officer [Dr. George C. Ruhland] of the District of Columbia is endeavoring to avert. A certain number of children in every community are infected at birth or soon after with a most virulent pus, often gonorrheal, which gets into their eyes from the birth passages of the mother. It excites an inflammation so intense that in many cases the eyes are irrevocably lost before it can be controlled. The discovery made more than half a century ago, that the organisms causing this inflammation could be made innocuous without injury to the sight, was epoch-making and the simple measures recommended for this purpose are now used in every civilized community throughout the world. They are employed in every public hospital as well as by private practitioners. These methods have reduced blindness during the last 25 years from 26% to less than 7% in children, as shown in the diminished numbers entering the schools for the blind. To fail to give every infant an opportunity to have this protection is to neglect a duty which we owe the community as well as the child. This has nothing to do with religious beliefs. It is purely a matter of physiological and biological knowledge which can be verified beyond question by those sufficiently interested to make inquiries concerning it. …

Was it not the Great Healer who said, whatsoever you do unto the least of these you do also unto me?

PARK LEWIS, M.D.

First Vice President

National Society for the Prevention of Blindness Buffalo, N. Y.

Discrepancies

Sirs:

In the issue of TIME, May 3, under Sport, your most interesting article has one or two discrepancies which might be of interest to you. In the first place, you state that “of the 19 U. S. colleges which maintain crews, 18 have Washington-trained oarsmen on their coaching staffs.” Syracuse, Princeton, M. I. T. and the U. S. Naval Academy all have other than Washington-trained coaching staffs. Likewise to call the late Hiram B. Connibear a “grandfather” of U. S. crew racing is a little unfair to those men who promoted and took part in intercollegiate rowing long before Mr. Connibear went to Washington. That crew does owe much to Mr. Connibear and to the University of Washington in developing the “arm and leg” stroke, no oarsman will deny.

STEEL SWIFT

Philadelphia, Pa.

Reader Swift is right.—ED.