Letters, Aug. 5, 1946

Mrs. Riggs & Mrs. Wiggs

Sirs:

I have long wondered why the average person thinks that Kate Douglas Wiggin wrote Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch. Now he legend has got into print (TIME, July 15). …

It is true that Wiggin suggests Wiggs, but this coincidence does not constitute authorship. Wiggs, in turn, is very like Riggs, which was Kate Douglas Wiggin’s name in later ife. But she certainly did not live in … Alice Hegan Rice’s Cabbage Patch.

RUTH WILCOX

Cleveland

¶TIME’S National Affairs editor was momentarily woolgathering on Kate Douglas Wiggin’s Sunnybrook Farm. —ED.

Greetings from the Southland

Sirs:

‘Buttinsky Damyankees” (TiME, July 15) That is just what re-elected Senator Bilbo to another term in the Senate. He may be all that you say he is or say is not, but it is none of the business of … damnedyankees.

You should keep in mind the fact that our Constitution was framed by Southerners; that for the first 80 years of our national life, Southern men were the leaders of the nation. You think you are better than anybody who lives in the South, and you never lose an opportunity to “rub it in” on the Southern people.

If you had any political sense and had stayed out of the campaign in Mississippi, Bilbo would have been defeated. . . .

E. E. PATTON Knoxville, Tenn.

The Human Animal Differs

Sirs:

As a psychologist, I cannot refrain from commenting upon “The Carrot and the Stick,” the article from the London Economist which you quote approvingly (TIME, July 15) as “some simple, understandable words to the British people. . . .”

Besides being vulnerable upon other counts this folksy little essay is hard to surpass as an example of the oversimplification that passes for psychology among so many economists and political scientists. It is an impeccable discussion of the motivation of the donkey, but used in reference to human beings it applies only to those who literally wish to make jackasses of themselves.

Certainly man is motivated by fear of hunger and desire for gain—by the stick and the carrot if you will. But the oversimplification and the error is the assumption that these are the necessary motives to human social action as they may be for donkey biological action.

When will it be understood that the human animal differs from other animals—notably the donkey in this connection—in that perhaps his strongest motivation is desire for prestige, status, the approval of his group? Is the businessman who gives up a $50,000 a year job to become a college president at $15,000 motivated primarily by fear of hunger or desire for material gain? . . . Are college professors motivated by the carrot? The truth is more nearly that they labor for ego-satisfaction in spite of a paucity of carrots in their chosen academic course. . . . Whatever is the case for the donkey”, the incentive for human behavior need not be material gain. . . .

LEO P. CRESPI Assistant Professor of Psychology Princeton University

Five Packs a Day

Sirs:

. . . Concerning your interesting article on Manuel Acuna Roxas, somebody took too big a puff for me. TIME (July 8) stated that Roxas smokes five packs of cigarets (Camels and Kools, no less) a day.

This means that if Roxas gets four hours sleep a night (which I doubt), he must smoke one cigaret every twelve minutes. With six hours sleep (conceivable), he must smoke one cigaret every 10.8 minutes, and with eight hours sleep he puffs away a cigaret every 9.6 minutes. . . .

A. HEATON ROBERTSON New York City

¶Many a nervous, nonpresidential heavy smoker takes only a few puffs per cigaret. Got a light?—ED.

End of a Regime

Sirs:

Your story, “Embassy Binge” (TiME, July 15), did not tell TIME’S readers why Ambassador Harriman gave his cocktail party. The party was a long overdue and valuable contribution to Embassy morale and Anglo-American friendship in London. It was also a spectacular and successful announcement to London that the austere regime of Mr. Harriman’s predecessor, John Winant, was ended.

JOHN OSBORNE

London

Typists’ Par

Sirs:

. . . Margaret Hamma . . . holds the world’s speed record at 149 words per minute; and, in one-minute demonstrations has hit as high as 165. But, where, oh where, are these “par typists” who can do 220 [TIME, July 15]?

EVERETT KIMBALL JR.

Northampton, Mass.

¶TIME set a high par: 120 w.p.m. An ambitious typesetter upped it 100.—ED.

Low Pay & Ridicule

Sirs:

There are several causes for the increasing shortage of well-trained teachers. One cause is of course, low salaries. The other is the fact that teachers are ridiculed. . . . TIME generally refers to a woman teacher as Belgrade rumor: being seen at U.S. and British information centers is none too healthy.—ED.

Shambles

Sirs:

What are shambles? The abbreviated dictionary at hand tells me: “slaughterhouse: hence, figuratively, a place of carnage or execution.” . . . You may remember Macaulay’s lay; how

Straightway Virginias led the maid a little space aside

To where the reeking shambles stood,

piled up with horn and hide.

TIME (July 8) … says that at Bikini “the carrier Independence was … a shambles.” A mess indeed, but since there were no men on it and at most a few goats, was it a bloody mess? Again . . . “In the Far East transportation … is a shambles.” Does your correspondent mean that train and plane wrecks are frequent and gory, or merely that he found it difficult to get to Shanghai?

With plenty of good English words for confusion and destruction, why contribute to the impoverishment of the mother tongue by ignorantly or carelessly misusing a word that has a precise meaning of its own?

CHARLES L. CARHART Dorset, Vt.

¶H. L. Mencken, American Language, Supplement I: “Shambles is a very old word in English. … In American usage it has now come to signify any sort of ‘very great, perhaps complete disorder, confusion or destruction. . . .’ “—ED.

Who Wants to Go Home?

Sirs:

. . . Last fall, the crying attitude sponsored in the Pacific by the Stars and Stripes under the slogan “I wanna go home” gave a picture of very bad conditions out here in Japan. When I saw General Eisenhower in Washington last December he wondered why I would want to come back to this “terrible place.” Then when General Eisenhower came out here two months ago, he admitted that this was the best place in the world for a soldier to serve. . . .

It is true that when we came in here we had nothing. We had to delouse barracks, manufacture stoves and stovepipes, get winter clothing piecemeal. . . . Now we have 25 fine hotels in operation, golf courses, stadia, hundreds of movies, some of the finest clubs I have ever seen, and in general we have more to offer a soldier and his dependents than I have ever before seen in over 44 years service. . . .

All over Japan, semi-permanent areas for dependent housing are springing up like mushrooms under Japanese contractors working under army supervision. . . .

There are a number of fine houses on the Yokohama bluff which were not burned. I did not assign these houses by seniority. . . . As a consequence there are a lot of field grade officers who would be glad to have the quarters in which our noncoms are living. . . .

The picture given in the article of TIME (July 1) would in my opinion discourage anyone from coming to Japan. To state that there is no kitchen in a Quonset hut and not point out that there is a fine central mess gives an erroneous impression. . . .

I concur fully with the sign which I saw a short time ago in Sapporo, way up north on the island of Hokkaido. This sign, in huge letters in front of an enlisted men’s club, stated “You never had it so good!”

R. L. EICHELBERGER Lieutenant General, Eighth Army Yokohama

“schoolmarm” (July 8,’May 27) instead of using the word teacher. . . . Young women today will not enter the field of teaching because they do not want to spend four— and many times five—years in college for the privilege of earning less than unskilled labor (in many states) and then to be derisively referred to as “schoolmarm.” . The public can have whatever type of schools they wish if they are willing to pay for them; and they can have any kind of teachers, too, if they are willing to pay for and will cease calling them “schoolmarms.” . . .

ELIZABETH KOCH President

Texas State Teachers Association San Antonio ¶Yes’m—ED.

District Justice

Sirs:

In Miscellany (TIME, July 8) you say: “Dictatorial. In Dade County, Fla., voters decided they didn’t want a district attorney named Frank O. Spain.” . . .

In the first place, there is no such political office in Dade County, Fla. as “district attorney.” I was a candidate for the office of State Attorney of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida . . . comprised of Dade and Monroe Counties.

In the second place, while the incumbent defeated me by a vote of 22,305 to 21,703, your statement that the voters of Dade decided they didn’t want . . . Frank O’ Spain is incorrect. In Dade County, the incumbent, Mr. Mincer, polled 20,691, while I polled 20,700.

In the third place, I am not dictatorial ; first place. . . .

FRANK O. SPAIN

Attorney at Law

¶In the fourth place, the voters dictating.—ED.

Susceptible Children

Sirs:

… “Leprosy is less contagious than almost any other communicable disease” [TIME, 17] is correct up to a certain point but should be amplified. It is the adult who is highly resistant—though in the history of Kalaupapa Settlement of Hawaii two missionaries, both . . . indifferent regarding contact, have acquired the infection.

On the other hand, young children are highly susceptible, both relatively and absolutly and there is reason to believe that in highly endemic regions most cases result from infection in early childhood, though frank manifestations frequently do not appear until later in life. . . .

H. W. WADE, M.D. Culion Leper Colony Philippines

Attendance: Good

Sirs:

… I want to register a faint squawk about an item in TIME of June 10. In the piece about Yugoslavia it says “No Yugoslav dared be seen at a British or American information center.” That just isn’t true because we have several hundred a day at ours and the British a few less, and there has been no noticeable slackening of attendance in recent weeks.

RICHARD BREESE

Director, U.S. Information Service Belgrade

¶TIME’S source substituted assumption for fact, figured (wrongly) that Yugoslavs would heed a widespread