Letters: Gas v. Guns

Sirs:

“Gas & Tears” in TIME, June 28 opens a subject with only one phase presented. Your readers are entitled to all the facts, and we believe the following information will be helpful to them.

We believe any one familiar with the practical use of tear gas does not recommend its use as a palliative for diseases, but that it should only be used under emergency conditions, making unnecessary the use of clubs, revolvers, shotguns, or rifles.

Statistics show that where tear gas is used, as compared to firearms, tear gas does not produce casualties; and other forms of weapons used on such occasions leave wounded and dead behind.

Comparing the specific data referred to in your editorial as against 15 years of practical manufacturing experience, and the actual use of tear gas by police and banks, justifies the following deduction:

We have medical reports, following examinations of employes working in tear gas over long periods of time. These reports show no ill effects resulting from continuous presence with the gas in regular factory operation. We have discharged complete tear gas systems in scores of tests in banks to prove efficiency and harmlessness. In many such bank tests, over 100 people have been gassed with no ill effects. On 26 occasions, banks have released their Federal tear gas system and successfully stopped attempted holdups, driving the bandits from the bank. Customers and employes in the banks showed no after effects. . . .

The question is: Shall gas be eliminated as a practical and humane plan for maintaining law and order, and firearms be used where force is necessary; or shall gas be considered the humane plan, based upon the facts presented herein, and tears be the aftermath in place of wounded and killed?

B. H. BARKER Vice President

Federal Laboratories, Inc. Pittsburgh, Pa.

Not concerned with debating the relative merits of tear gas and guns, TIME reported accurately the American Medical Association’s conclusion that “enough irritation . . . may be produced by tear gases to pave the way for secondary bacterial infection.”—ED.

Egg Shell Landing

Sirs:

I believe your readers would be interested in the letter which we recently received from Professor Piccard describing his balloon ascension reported in your latest issue [TIME, July 26]. I am attaching a copy of the letter, which seems to me one of the most interesting and dramatic accounts of its kind which I have ever seen.

We have done quite a bit of work with Professor Piccard in supplying balloons for his activities in the upper air and are greatly impressed by his courage and ingenuity. Of course the balloons with which he made his ascent are exactly the same thing as are used singly for sending up meteorological instruments to flash back radio signals of the weather conditions in the stratosphere. Three Government stations are now using them instead of airplanes for obtaining daily weather observations from the upper air. . . .

ROBERT J. GRAY

Dewey and Almy Chemical Co. Cambridge, Mass.

TIME’S thanks to Dewey and Almy Chemical Co. for Professor Piccard’s account of his Rochester, Minn, balloon ascension, which follows:—ED.

Dear Mr. Rehbock:

I am happy to say as I already telegraphed to you that the balloons behaved beautifully while in flight. I rose slowly to an altitude of about eleven thousand feet. There I started to cut loose the balloons, cutting the string near the load ring as previously planned. The first balloon rising from the lower cluster went up and caught under the upper cluster so that it continued to lift. I then pulled down a little on another balloon string and cutting again near the load ring this one was shot clear stopping my ascension. From that time which was approximately two o’clock until about five, I dropped so slowly as to remain almost in a state of equilibrium. At five o’clock I was still at an altitude close to 10,000 feet. Sighting the Mississippi River and an extensive fog bank running eastward from the river and the sun being very hot on the balloons which had again begun to rise, I decided it was safer to make a landing. Now in order to be sure that none of the balloons cut free would rise and catch under the upper cluster and be possibly thrown free at an inopportune moment at the landing, I pulled them down on the strings until I was able to puncture them with my hunting knife. Each time I chose a balloon which was on the outer edge of the cluster and each time that I pulled it down it ran between the strings of the other balloons and stayed in the inner part of the strings until the appendix was about 10 feet above the load ring. . . . The strings of the other balloons cut deeply into the balloon but never cut nor broke it and I always had to cut it with my knife in order to destroy the balloon. This was a slow and arduous work. At an altitude of about 5,000 feet I drew several of the balloons down and fastened them on cleats inside the top brim of the gondola so that I had them ready to stab if need should arise later. Sighting a deep canyon with a flat bottom several hundred feet wide, I destroyed enough balloons to drop rapidly between the walls of the canyon to reach that spot. Finding that I was drifting toward the steep rocky slope on the far side of the canyon, I drew my revolver and shot a dozen balloons bringing the aircraft down in a clump of small trees with the drag rope extending back over the trees. It was a perfect egg shell landing. I pulled the drag rope free and drew myself down between the branches slipping from right to left and left to right as I worked my way toward the ground. When the gondola was on the ground and the lower cluster of balloons still 25 feet above the tops of the trees and the top cluster 50 feet above them, of course, I made the contact which exploded the TNT releasing the top cluster of balloons. Excelsior and sand fell down upon me. A few minutes later a small bunch of burning excelsior fell from the branches of the trees into the gondola. This I was able quickly to extinguish while I was outside the gondola leaning over the edge of the gondola and crushing the small fire under the stool. However, more and more of the burning excelsior had dropped into the gondola. The dead balloons hanging over the gondola began to burn and presently the whole thing was beyond my control. All of my equipment has been completely destroyed. Only the burned aluminum shell of the gondola itself remained.

This accident at landing was one which would not ordinarily occur and which can easily be prevented in the future by using rock-wool instead of excelsior.

JEAN PICCARD

University of Minnesota Institute of Technology Minneapolis, Minn.

Fair & Accurate

Sirs:

The council of the Southern California State Dental Association, representing some 1,500 members of organized dentistry, wishes to express its appreciation for your fair and accurate treatment of the annual convention of the American Dental Association at Atlantic City [TIME, July 26].

Dentistry is a young profession, still suffering from growing pains, and your sympathetic attitude will do much to establish public confidence in its efforts to progress.

ARTHUR W. LUFKIN Editor

Southern California State Dental Association Los Angeles, Calif.

“Dinky” Yazoo

Sirs:

In its report of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Mound Bayou. Miss., TIME [July 26] refers to “what is now the dinky Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad.”

The Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad operates some 1,600 miles of line in four States, connecting New Orleans, Shreveport, Baton Rouge and Monroe, La., Memphis, Tenn., Jackson, Meridian, Vicksburg, Greenville, Natchez, Greenwood and Clarksdale, Miss., and Helena, Ark. Property investment is roundly $100,000,000. In 1936 the road performed 1,085,000.000 ton miles of freight service and 60,000,000 miles of passenger service, gave employment to approximately 4,000 persons, contributed $1,625,000 in taxes in the territory served.

L. A. DOWNS President

Illinois Central System Chicago, Ill.

Sirs:

. . . This railroad runs some mighty long freight trains and you can find a mighty large army of people to say that that is 100% correct. . .

WILLIAM HARRIS Sigel, Pa.

All thanks to Yazoo’s President Downs and Reader Harris for an explanation of the service rendered Mississippi Valley citizens by the railroad’s 88 locomotives, 61 passenger cars, 1,195 freight cars and 3 cabooses.—ED.

Camp Compliment

Sirs:

May I compliment you on a swell issue of the MARCH OF TIME, which I saw at the Chicago Theatre. Being particularly interested in child welfare, will you tell me whose camp it was that was shown in the second half of the camp pictures? I refer to the charitable camp wherein the children were living in small groups in covered wagons and tepees and lean-tos—the camp where the children were treated as individuals with a view to developing their individual character and responsibility.

JOHN NETEDU

Chicago, Ill.

The pictures to which Reader Netedu refers were taken at Life Camps—the 51-year-old charitable enterprise founded by the comic weekly Life, taken over and carried on by TIME Inc. when it acquired the name LIFE for its new picture magazine. Under the direction of Lloyd Burgess Sharp are two boys’ camps, at Pottersville, N. J. and Matamoras, Pa.; one girls’ camp at Branchville, Conn. Life Camps have been supported by nationwide private contributions. This year the entire overhead is being paid by TIME Inc., thus ensuring that every contributed dollar will go direct to the child, not one for office expense. For further information or for contributions address: Life Camps, Inc., 135 East 42nd St., New York City.—ED.