Overstep

Sirs:

Now you have gone too far. Editorial stunts (and I speak from an experience of more than 35 years in active newspaper work) can be carried beyond what is pleasing. TIME'S new department of FASHIONS is just such an overstep. You know why without my going any further: the "formula."

Don't bear down on the "formula" idea so hard. It will make your magazine too tricky, I warn you. See how monotonous those Fashion pages are now when you read them over: 'The Idea, the Motive, the Story. The Idea, the Motive, the Story. The Idea, the Motive, the Story." I was so tired that I had to stop in the middle, go off to p. 26 for a little relief and come back later to finish.

Good intentions deserve good counsel. Mine to you is to cut out this latest FASHION department, "formula" and all.

HENRY E. JENKINS Philadelphia, Pa.

Cheated

Sirs : Your new FASHIONS department [TIME, Nov. 14] cheats my intelligence, time and purse. I am a businessman (real estate).

I pay $5 a year for TIME. I have done three years in succession, besides paying for six other subscriptions as Christmas presents to friends. I read the magazine with the utmost concentration, trying to fix in my memory, during two hours reading each week, the thousands of facts you furnish me in each issue. The mental effort, time and money I have always considered well invested.

Now comes your silly, insipid FASHIONS.

It steals 3% columns from my TIME (5% of the current number). And for what good? To babble about eight trivial topics. Let me criticize them specifically. But first let me praise the pattern of each article. Your summarizing The Idea, The Motive and The Story is as compact an editing method as I can imagine. That is truly TIME'S selling point and success. Now criticisms.

"The Kitchen:" Fancy-colored kitchen gear is worth at the most a footnote to an ART article on art-in-the-home or a BUSINESS article on department store operations. And are you sure that Macy's and Wanamaker's were the first to sell them? For years I have seen them in "gift shoppes" run by loathsome women with tricky ideas.

" Wedding:" The article is written most vapidly and gives no names or other authority. That is damnable in TIME.

"Furniture:" Hollow and affected is Fur niture Salesman Frankl's explanation and gloss for kitchenet apartment furniture. You, TIME, should have milked down his bloated phrases and said prosaically : "Salesman Frankl sells furniture-with-a-pinched-look. It is acceptable and esthetic because it fits appropriately those pinched crannies of costly New York apart ments." Mr. Frankl's initials made me laugh. His balderdash resembles that of that other P. T. -- Barnum.

"Rain Coats:" Here are facts, but trivial. 'Twould have been better to have reported them under SCIENCE as a significant extension of the nickel-in-the-slot idea.

"Hotel Service:" Free buttonhole flowers are corrupters of public morals. Men who wear buttonhole flowers are not greatly to be admired. Worse, you disseminate another trick for use of those hotel parasites, the lavatory men.

"Baby's Clothes:" This is the first time that I can recall where you put the only real fact of an article in its footnote: " "In Catholic countries blue (the Virgin's color) is used for girls and pink for boys." That is new news to me and rationalizes a "fashion." I appre ciate also your telling me the important department stores of eight great cities. Otherwise this article is twiddle-twoddle.

"Bathrooms:" Pooh, pooh! A housewife is proud of her bathroom's cleanliness, not of its ornateness. If she wants fantastic ablutions, she attends the cinema for a few weeks. Meanwhile let her use bathroom fixtures sup plied by The Kohler Co. of Kohler, Wisconsin, or the Standard Sanitary Mfg. Co., or their competitors.

"Schools:" Unless the glass of that German school permits passage of ultraviolet light (see your good footnote), it is no better than any well-lighted U. S. schoolhouse, and your report is inane. You give as The Motive "to promote health ;" you give as The Story an esthetic appreciation of the structure. That is deceptive logic--very, very rare in TIME.

By this analysis I prove (to my satisfaction, at any rate) my point that you do not give me my full TIME-value in this FASHIONS department. I shall not cancel my subscription for what is to me a complete loss of 5% in TIME. But I shall appreciate your eliminating the department.

HENRY SHIPMAN JR. Cleveland, Ohio.

Wants $10

Sirs:

I should not think that you would want to make yourselves look stingy and cheap, but that is the impression produced upon me by the heading above your new "Fashion Department" [Nov. 14 issue].

You offer to "reward" the subscriber who detects a genuine new fashion with "knowledge that he has performed a petty public service." First I ask you if it would not be only decent to give such a subscriber at least $10 for services which are to your profit. It makes me angry to see people trying to get away with something for nothing. That is not a straight way to do business. It will not react to your favor in the long run.

And what is "a petty public service?" I should say that an act were either a public service or else no public service, and I should say that a note on a genuine new fashion would fall into the latter class, being a service not to the General Public, but to the editors of TIME, who are trying to get something for nothing. What is the answer ?

JULIUS SUSSKIND New York City.

Machines

Sirs:

.... And now I shall be personal. My wife spends too much money on her clothes. Our kitchen contains every machine known to man except an electric chair and the new Ford. She subscribes to TIME but I will cancel her subscription unless there is a speedy removal of this wretched innovation [FASH IONS].

A.E. RIVINGTON

Louisville, Ky.

Bigotry

Sirs:

Please remove my name from your subscription list and discontinue sending TIME to me.

I do not care to subscribe for any publication that sponsors a statement such as the enclosed, which appeared in TIME, Nov. 7, even though the bigotry contained therein may be tactfully surrounded by complimentary expressions.

If you will send me a bill for my trial subscription, I will immediately forward payment.

THOMAS F. DELURY Boston, Mass.

The alleged bigotry to which Onetime-Subscriber Delury objected was in the following paragraph:

Fifty Cents. Up to Governor Alfred Emanuel Smith of New York marched a process server with a subpoena for the Governor to appear as witness in behalf of one Lyman H. Bevans, Albany attorney facing disbarment. Governor Smith accepted the service, either to show he held himself no different from common citizens in the law's eyes, or because he was ignorant of the fact that the Governor of New York cannot be subpoenaed. With the subpoena, Governor Smith accepted the customary witness fee--50 cents --which he soon dropped into a Roman Catholic poorbox. When notified that the Governor of New York cannot be subpoenaed, Governor Smith had to return the witness fee--50 cents of his own.

-- ED.

Critique

Sirs:

The letters published in your last issue were the last word in blatant conceit. You begin by being rude and contradictory on the subject of Washington's religion; you go on, print a deserved letter of correction (about ships and whistles) because it contains a whining compliment ; then you tell President George Davis how to manage his Davis automobile business; then, forgetting to apologize for the mistake it chastizes, you proudly display a letter from a member of the U. S. Treasury Department; this is followed by an unsolicited list of the U. S. Senators who subscribe to your magazine ; next we have an advertisement for Christmas sales of TIME, sneaked in as answer to a correspondent; then, dear God, a letter saying that a ham actor (Adolphe Menjou) reads TIME, followed by what appears to be an anthology compiled by some forester in praise of one of your customary impertinences; then, mianmian, "no detail is too petty to try to print correctly;" then you order a subscriber to REREAD your "political spectrum," whatever that is; the last three letters a mere waste of space; all are included because they pat your funny little paper on its curly, flea-bitten head.

Not content with these five columns or more of smugness, you must print a lewd picture on page 40. Actress West, a nasty creature at best, is pictured with her dress slipping down.

This stuff is terrible. If I had a subscription I would cancel it.

PHILIP Fox Poughkeepsie, N. Y.

Schwartzbard Fought

Sirs : Did you not, in your account of the Schwartzbard trial, [TIME, Nov. 7] omit one very important statement -- namely, that the defendant fought valiantly in the French army during the World War, that he was awarded the Croix de Guerre? Petlura, a Russian, turned against his own people, assisted the enemy. Schwartzbard, a Russian, fought bravely against his country's foe.

Public opinion, impressed by the facts just mentioned, demanded the acquittal of the patriot, despite the fact that he was a Jew.

Could it be otherwise in France, hotbed of Continental anti-Semitism ?

D. MAX EICHHORN

Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, Ohio.

"No Murderer"

Sirs:

The highest court of France has acquitted Mr. Samuel Schwartzbard from any guilt in the Petlura affair, yet you, in your supposedly unbiased presentation of news, in TIME, Nov. 7, have called this man "murderer" and "culprit."

Such misuse of words I Who is a murderer ? Is it a man who by his courageous action saved the lives of many more than 50,000 Jews ? If Schwartzbard was what you so prominently titled him, then all those who risk their lives for a lofty principle in a war, they also would be murderers. The incidents of this affair were also a war by the butcher Petlura and his blood-thirsty gangs against an innocent and defenseless people. Any person who would get rid of such an inhuman, barbarous individual is a hero.

Also in dark letters you print the word "culprit." What should have followed this was a description of Petlura. He was the guilty person, the criminal. Instead you write so ignorantly or purposely of Schwartzbard. You gave the honor of a picture in your magazine to Schwartzbard and call him "murderer." There in that place should have been another, that was declared so by the most impartial and fairest court in the world.

TIME is unbiased I have always believed. I should still like to believe it. I hope it is an error on your part and as such should be corrected.

SUBSCRIBER Louis QUAYTMAN New York, N. Y.

Fourth Largest

Sirs:

On p. 32, col. 1 of TIME, Oct. 24 occurs the positive statement that the cathedral of St. John the Divine is not the third largest in th world. On p. 410, col. 1, of the Scientific American for Nov. 1927 occurs the positive statement that it is. Which is the accurate statement ?

DUANE SQUIRES' Mayville, N. Dak.

TIME is accurate. The square foot age of St. Peter's at Rome is 227, -069; of the Mesquita at Cordova 232,250, less about one-third for courtyard and cloisters; of Santa Maria de la Sede at Seville 128,570 of St. John the Divine at New York 109,082; of the Duomo at Milan 107,-000. The Mesquita, many pillared was at one time a mosque, the largest sacred building of the Mohammedans, after their Kaaba at Mecca When in the 16th Century the Mesquita, with many alterations, was transformed to a Roman Catholic cathedral, Emperor Charles V (1500-58) exclaimed: "You have built here what could have been built anywhere else as well; and you have destroyed what was unique in the world."--ED.

Why Bleary?

Sirs:

On p. 29 of TIME, Oct. 3, 1927, under the heading of "Voices" it is read: "Bleary night crowds in Porto Rico."

I should like to know what was in your mind at the time the adjective "bleary" was used. Do you call us bleary because we do not send you back bound in boxes some of the carpetbaggers and petty politicians we are forced to enjoy as gifts from Washington?

Or do you refer to us as bleary because we lack a Ku Klux Klan, which would do away with some of the colonial peculiarities which are imposed upon us from the North?

Or because we are not always ready to commit suicide and prefer to leave the solution of our problems to the levelling hand of Destiny?

It is quite easy to use adjectives at a distance when referring to places of which we know little. It is almost unbelievable that TIME should use such dubious or perhaps insulting words.

R. DE VILLAFUERTE San Juan, Porto Rico.

Porto Rico night crowds are no blearier than those of Paris or Pittsburgh. All night crowds are inclined to be bleary; particularly prizefight night crowds.--ED.

Thinks Grimes Joked

Sirs:

I am interested in the letter of Mr. J. L. Grimes (TIME, Nov. 7), who writes concerning a brass pipe advertisement published in Time, Sept. 26.

"The artist ... did not prove to me that rust-colored water was due to steel or iron pipe."

We should like to ask Mr. Grimes what else : thinks it could come from. Mr. Grimes goes on to speak of the "imaginary situation" ol iron and steel pipes rusting. Surely Mr rrimes must be joking, but it is no joke to thousands of householders throughout the country who are suffering the annoyances of rust-filled water pipes that cut down water pressure and sooner or later have to be replaced, as any good plumber can tell you, and as many junk heaps can show.

Steel and iron pipe are satisfactory metals to use in gas and oil lines, and in heating pipes where there is no free oxygen in the water to cause corrosion as it does in small water pipes.

Mr. Grimes says that "it requires no imagination to picture the effects of chlorine (used to purify city waters) upon brass pipe. That is true. It requires no imagination because we know very definitely how a chlorine treated water supply acts on both brass and steel pipes too. This knowledge has influenced practically every architect and plumber in New York (a city whose water is treated with chlorine) to recommend and urge brass pipe because iron and steel water pipes rust out in about ten years, while forty year installations of brass are still going strong.

Come North, Mr. Grimes, where up-to-date satisfactory plumbers use up-to-date satisfactory water pipes.

RODNEY CHASE Waterbury, Conn.