Too Sensational
Sirs:
My subscription expires May, 1927. Let it stay expired. I am through with it. It's too sensational and not fit to be read by growing children.
ELMER SCHUYLER
Chairman
Department of Mathematics Bay Ridge High School Brooklyn, N. Y.
Cancellation
Sirs:
Will you please not send me any more numbers of TIME as I do not care to have this type of magazine in my house. I subscribed to it for two years on the recommendation that it was better than the Literary Digest, but it is not, in my opinion so I don't care to have anymore copies. MRS. ARTHUR H. SCOTT Todmorden Farm Media, Pa.
Dislikes Red
Sirs:
Will you please cancel my subscription to TIME on its expiration. I am disappointed in what promised to be a very entertaining and educational publication. I feel that your reference to notables is at times impertinent and your liberty with diction runs into excesses. I also do not like the red border and feel that I would much rather have the Literary Digest as it covers the subjects covered by TIME in a dignified manner and withal fills my wants.
J. A. CAMPBELL
Long Beach, Calif.
Too Brief
Sirs:
While your magazine or newsmagazine as you call it serves its purpose, I am content to let my subscription run out. The trouble with TIME, as I see it, is that it is too brief. You do not have space to cover thoroughly your subjects. Hence please cancel my subscription.
B. D. ROBERTS
Fort Worth, Tex,
Bigoted
Sirs:
... You've printed several letters commending your review of Elmer Gantry [TIME, March 28]. May I say a word on the other side ? My friend, Hillis L. Remington, says the critique was clever. I agree with him. Clever, yes, but that's all. I am a TIME enthusiast, but I feel that your review of Mr. Lewis' book was, consciously or unconsciously, bigoted. I speak for my friend, who reads TIME every week at the Meriden (Conn.) Y. M. C. A., as well as for myself.
ELDOR PAUL SCHULZE
Albany, N. Y.
Much Pleased
Sirs:
... I have heard from all the people to whom I send your magazine (would that all who received gifts could be prodded the same way), and they are very much pleased with the gift. They don't all like the whole magazine. One doesn't like the red outline on the cover, and another doesn't like the way you published certain details of the Chaplin case which the so-called "reputable newspapers" omitted, and the third thinks that you are all right. As for myself, my renewal in advance speaks for itself.
So long as you continue to please the average reader and your subscription lists hold up you may feel that you have one of the best Weeklies. You may consider me a Perpetual rather than an Original subscriber so long as you continue to play the game along the lines you have started. May I be permitted to say that it is an unusual person or publication who is willing to show the rest of us the slaps received from some and who is always willing to admit the mistake when one occurs. THOS. PHILLIPS
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Military Science, Cambridge, Mass.
Short Cut
Sirs:
... It has been my pleasure to have been a subscriber to TIME for a period of two years and I find it indispensable. In a business such as mine, with the exacting hours and attention, TIME has not only been a short cut on all that is worth while in the world but it is a recreation to which I look forward each week with great anticipation.
LAMONT A. HALL
President, The W. L. Hall Co., Wholesale Grocers Fruit and Produce Waterbury, Conn.
Virile
Sirs:
. . . As world traveler and lecturer ... I would not be without its [TIME'S] virile, informing tutelage.
Very truly thine,
ALICE ROWLAND MACOMBER
New Bedford, Mass.
Honest
Sirs: . . . TIME, a great paper honestly edited.
W. G. SMITH
Beardstown, Ill.
Conclusions
Sirs:
I have been reading TIME, the weekly newsmagazine, for four months, and have arrived at certain conclusions:
(1) The idea upon which TIME bases its textual selection is good.
(2) Your selection of items individually is good.
(3) Your pedantry is detestable.
(4) Your style is abominable. There's scarcely a cub of any ability of any newspaper of any size who couldn't beat you at your own game. Not only is TIME written with a perceptible lack of crispness, spontaneity and human touch, but there is little sense of proportion evident in its columns. Weak beginnings battle equally weak endings in a veritable struggle to make the old rag stodgy. Man alive! if it's a newsmagazine why make it an historical tract?
(5) As for your picture captions! They neither reveal nor stimulate interest. In that case, why bother?
Here's for a more lively magazine!
WALTER F. DANTZSCHER
New York, N. Y.
Tabloid
Sirs:
I have never read a tabloid, but items which I have read in TIME give me an idea what they might be like.
MARTHA R. HUNTER
New York, N. Y.
Cheers, Hisses
Sirs: TIME, March 21, NATIONAL AFFAIRS-- Robert Nelson Stanfield. Just between you and me and the gatepost, Stanfield* ought to go to the Penton Building/- in Cleveland and Kick H--out of the kids that are responsible for that article even if he has to lick the whole Yale class of 1930.* Cheers for the Senator with g--s enough to get drunk, throw dishes, rescue women, play poker. Hisses for the weekly that lists the trousseau of his daughter and publishes it as an unpaid bill. You label it news. Macfadden is at least honest enough not to put a fictitious label on his tainted tins. . . . H. H. THOMPSON
Pittsburgh. Pa.
Four Advertisers
Sirs:
I think your news items would increase their clarity if a map or two were inserted. Particularly does this apply to news like the Chinese puzzle. Your own advertisers speak more potently of this scheme than I. In the issue of TIME dated April 4 no less than four advertisers use this method. See pp. 1, 31, 39, 43. Why not TIME itself?
H. ROBERT SMITH
Maiden, Mass.
Wendell Goddard Sirs:
. . . Several weeks ago [TIME, Dec. 13] I noticed that the name of Wendell Goddard (New York City), was included in TIME among those of the students in the Traveling University who for their disgraceful conduct in Japan were sent back to this country. I was very much disappointed as I have known Goddard well for some time and he was the last person I would expect to do anything of the kind. I was much relieved the other day to learn that he had been in no way connected with the escapade and had been sent home with the offenders to see that they did nothing worse if that be possible. If you have not already been notified of, and corrected, the erroneous impression given by your article, please do so.
P. S. EVANS
New York, N. Y.
While the World Slumbers
Sirs: . . . But, of course, I do want TIME and here's my check. I read it while I am dispensing free lunch to the young redhead at 2 a. m. The magazine is very easy to hold with one hand (the other one holds the young hopeful) and the reading matter is concise and clear enough for me to understand even at the zero hour. You see, while the rest of the world slumbers, I'm keeping up with TIME-- and my son. FLORA DAYTON
Detroit, Mich.
At Vanderbilt
Sirs:
I have been reading TIME for the last four years and have enjoyed it immensely. We use it in our curriculum of History here at Vanderbilt University. In your advertisement (p. 38) of An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser, you state that it is the only modern work of literature, that you know of, that has been added to a college curriculum within a year after its publication. Author Will Durant's Story of Philosophy was added to our required lists of reading within less than six months of first publication, the English department ranking it with other works of literature. I thought you would perhaps like to know about this.
TIME is choice reading and is certainly enjoyed by the students here at Vanderbilt. This issue, Vol IX, No. 13, is exceedingly interesting and well done. Good luck to
TIME.
ARTHUR CROWNOVER JR.
Nashville, Tenn.
Music Lover
Sirs:
In TIME, April 4, you said President Coolidge, no music lover, did not attend the concert, meaning the Amherst Musicale. I was there and wish to inform you President Coolidge was not only present, but applauded every number. He apparently enjoyed the program, throughout.
I am a subscriber to your magazine and would not be without it.
LLOYD WEIDNER
Washington, D. C.
Sirs: The second paragraph of TIME, April 4 states, in part, that "President Coolidge, no music-lover, did not attend the concert" (given by the Amherst College the Musical Clubs). I can't decide whether you think he did not attend because he is not a music lover, or consider him no music lover because he did not, according to the papers, attend. In any case, President Coolidge was present in the box with Mrs. Coolidge and John. . . . The fact is, the President enjoyed the whole program thoroughly -- which, if your estimate of him is correct, is no compliment to our musicianship MALCOLM S. LANGFORD
Leader of Amherst Musical Clubs Psi Upsilon House Amherst, Mass.
Garfield's Sons
Sirs -- In a recent issue of TIME (March 28) you mention a number of American presidents who had "smart sons" .... I think you overlooked President Garfield, father of a college president, a noted architect and a prominent attorney of Cleveland. JEAN PATON
Cleveland, Ohio
Able sons of the late onetime U. S. President James Abram Garfield are: 1) President Harry Augustus, 63, of Williams College; 2) Attorney James Rudolph, 61, of Cleveland, onetime (1907-09) U. S. Secretary of the Interior; 3) Attorney Irvin McDowell, 56, of Boston; 4) Architect Abram, 54, of Cleveland.--ED.
*TIME chronicled (March 21) that retiring Senator Robert Nelson Stanfield of Oregon was arrested in September, 1925, on charges of drunkenly throwing crockery around a restaurant, that he rescued a drowning woman at Atlantic City last July, that he was sued three weeks ago by two Manhattan modistes for $1,121, allegedly owed for his daughter's trousseau.--ED.
/-Where TIME presses print--ED.
*No member of the Yale Class of 1930 is responsible for TIME's observations on the subject of Senator Stanfield.#151;ED. TIME.