Letters, Sep. 26, 1938

Broad Grin

Sirs:

You will be interested in the following incident and the enclosed pictures which were taken at Seattle’s Boeing Field when Assistant Secretary of War Johnson arrived after a flight over Alaska. As the plane landed, Congressman Warren G. Magnuson ran across the field waving a copy of TIME, Aug. 22, on whose cover appeared a photograph of Johnson. “It’s all about you!” shouted Magnuson. Reluctantly, Secretary Johnson took the copy, glanced at the cover and frowned. “Is it favorable?” “Very favorable, sir,” replied the Congressman. While reporters & cameramen watched, Secretary Johnson, still frowning, riffled the pages, gradually broke into a broad grin (see cut) as he read TIME’S story on the War Department.

BILL WILLIAMS

Seattle, Wash.

WPAche

Sirs:

Subject: Tragedy to Ellis Colvin, p. 26, TIME, Sept. 12.

I am positive that close investigation of this incident will disclose the following:

1) He did not lose his balance. Termites ate away the handle.

2) The Government compensation bureau in charge will designate the consequences as a WPAche.

I further suggest that the “million U. S. taxpayers” who, like myself, have long awaited news of this inevitable accident contribute to a fund to erect a monument commemorating the spot. What would be more fitting than to have Ellis Colvin pose for the sculptor, assuming the position he had the moment before the calamity fell? What do other tax (W)PAyers say to this?

GEORGE E. STALLE

Elizabeth, N. J.

Worthy Object

Sirs: Having read with interest the many letters pro and con on the New Deal I have since wondered how many readers are familiar with a quotation attributed by Elbert Hubbard* to Abraham Lincoln: “Inasmuch as most good things are produced by labor, it follows that all such things ought to belong to those whose labor has produced them. But it has happened in all ages of the world that some have labored, and others, without labor, have enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor as nearly as possible is a worthy object of any good government.” I am equally curious about the type of letter we might expect a 1938 Lincoln to write in definition of the New Deal.

THOMAS K. WENRICK

Middletown, Ohio

Tall, Blond, Truthful

Sirs:

As a tall, blond, truthful Aryan, I am sufficiently gifted mentally and not too afraid of the sound of my own voice to ask you respectfully why The Nazi Primer was reviewed in TIME of Aug. 22 under the heading of “Non-Fiction.”

N. A. M. LINDSAY

Chapala, Mexico

Words

Sirs:

Over my semi-defunct body I grant you “triten” (line 6, p. 51, TIME, Sept. 5)—but for all our sakes, keep away from “stalen” while the Dies Committee is sitting.

GARDNER REA

Brookhaven, N. Y.

Sirs:

The trend of affairs appears to demand occasional new coinage to facilitate coherent verbal exchange of ideas.

With respect to dictatory autocracy and New Deal democracy, it is not always clear where “the parson leaves off and the pew-rent begins” ; I beg to contribute for current circulation: “ipsedictatorial” (or-“dictatory”) and “demautocratic” (or -“cracy”).

EUGENE R. LEWIS

Los Angeles, Calif.

Streamlined Elephant

Sirs: Has NO one discovered that the Republicans’ new streamlined elephant has its knees bending the wrong way? An elephant’s legs are bent in the same manner as you bend yours. The result, as shown in TIME [Aug. 15], gives the impression that the worthy animal is ready to go either way at a moment’s notice.

JIM DOWNING

Tulsa, Okla.

P.S. This has nothing to do with my political views, which are unsullied, God help me!

Last week in San Francisco, Sculptor Thomas Harrison Reed Jr. denied Reader Downing’s charge, said: “The elephant was perfectly normal the last time I saw it.” — ED.

Wet Bulb

Sirs:

TIME promises, in response to the queries of Reader Combs [TIME, Sept. 5], to keep its weather eye open for an interpretation of the weather in terms of its effect on humans. One very simple step in the direction of such interpretation would be the publication of wet bulb thermometer readings. . . .

As many people know, a wet bulb thermometer is a thermometer whose bulb is surrounded by a knitted cotton tube, with its end dipped in water which keeps the bulb moist. In a draft (about three feet per second or over) evaporation reduces the temperature, and from the amount of such reduction and the reading of the dry bulb thermometer the humidity is computed.

A perspiring human on a hot day approximates quite closely the condition of the wet bulb. He finds a draft, if possible, and if the day be humid he gets little relief from the draft, and suffers accordingly. . . ”

To give an example or two: consider a day where the ordinary dry bulb thermometer reads 86°, and the relative humidity is 93%. The wet bulb temperature would be 84°. . . .

Consider another day when the dry bulb temperature is 102° but the relative humidity is only 47%. The wet bulb temperature would again be approximately 84°, and the victim would suffer no more than on the first day in spite of the fact that the temperature is 18° higher. . .

DONALD K. LIPPINCOTT

San Francisco, Calif.

Illinois’ Smith

Sirs:

The undersigned TIME readers would appreciate a TIMEly outline of the record, both legislative and political, of T. V. Smith, Senator in the Illinois Legislature, and Democratic candidate for Congressman-at-large from Illinois. . . .

C. M. DUFF, D. D. S.

LUTHER TAYLOR

T. D. TOBERTY

J. WAYNE HOFFERKAMP

JOHN WAKEMAN

Springfield, Ill.

The record of Congressional Candidate Thomas Vernor Smith is as follows:

Born: Blanket, Tex., April 26, 1890.

Careers: His first career, as a farmer on the Texas plains, was climaxed when, aged 13, he picked 413 Ib. of cotton in one day. His second began when he gave up teaching philosophy at his alma mater, the University of Texas, to study philosophy at the University of Chicago. In the next eight years he won a full professorship, a reputation among philosophers for the originality, skepticism, intellectual geniality of his editorship of the International Journal of Ethics. His third career, as publicist and politician, blossomed around the University’s radio Round Table which he helped found in 1931. Three years later Illinois’ Democratic Governor Henry Horner invited him to run for the State Senate in the partly Negro and ordinarily Republican University district. As a politician Philosopher Smith proved no flash in the pan. Although he had repudiated Chicago’s Kelly-Nash machine and alienated Sponsor Horner by his independence, this year he beat the machine candidate for the Democratic nomination for Congressman-at-Large.

Philosophy: Tall, gangling, sandy-haired Philosopher Smith accepts his success in politics as natural enough. He attributes it to: 1) his homespun personality (he is “Tom” and not T. V. or Professor Smith on the radio); 2) his thin but intimate radio voice, which listeners so persistently confused with Alexander Woollcott’s, that in desperation he invited Woollcott to talk on one of his programs; and 3) his political philosophy. His philosophy: that politicians are not supposed to evolve their own ideas but to evolve compromise programs. He thinks legislation should be written by experts, steered by politicians. In the Illinois Senate he introduced only one bill, providing for a legislative council to map the work of the next session. At the moment he is specifically advocating more civil service, “perfecting” the National Labor Relations Board, “birth control” of bills in Congress, giving ex-Presidents seats in the Senate. He also wants to abolish the job he is running for by reapportioning the State’s Congressional districts.

Other politicians think that Professor Smith’s chief asset and liability is his personality, one of the most individual in contemporary U. S. politics.

Conceited, sure of his own ideas, fond of his own voice, he reads aloud everything he writes, wakes up friends to recite his poetry over the telephone. Impudent, he has mercilessly ridiculed the ideas of his superior, Chicago’s metaphysical young President Robert Maynard Hutchins, made sport of his colleagues in the Legislature by speaking in allegories, in one of which Boss Kelly figured as a rat, Chicago’s Health Commissioner Herman Bundesen as a mosquito. When an opponent praised him for his eloquence, he retorted: “Just liquid vowels.” Ambitious, he won a big radio audience outside Illinois when his 1936 Roosevelt talks proved so successful that he was put on a national network. Smith on Smith: “The Town Crier of America’s Main Street”; “an ignorant man and a philosopher.”—ED.

* Scrapbook, p. 58.