Guessing

Sirs:

Having been a regular reader of your publication for some time, I write to ask if in the near future you will print a prognostication as to the outcome of the November election, listing the States and your guess as to how each will cast its electoral vote.

An estimate of this character appeared in the New York Times for July 24 and was given out by Manager Farley of the Roosevelt Campaign Committee.

An estimate of this kind appeared in the Kiplinger letter from Washington, D.C., dated July 2. These people promise a subsequent estimate dated July 30 and no doubt will issue others from time to time.

It would be helpful, illuminating and interesting if your staff, in its usual careful way, would inform your readers.

KENNETH McM. DICKEY Kansas City, Mo.

Last month Manager Farley predicted Governor Roosevelt would beat President Hoover "by the greatest electoral majority ever given a Democratic nominee for President in a two-party fight." The Roosevelt headquarters forecast of the 531 Electoral College votes:

Sure Democratic--247, including Missouri, New York, Colorado, Washington. Probably Democratic--99, including Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska, Wisconsin. Doubtful--100, including Iowa, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Connecticut. Probably Republican--85, including California, Michigan, Pennsylvania. On July 30, the Kiplinger Washington Agency, on the basis of its own reports, "indicated Hoover's reelection" as follows:

Sure Hoover--131, including Iowa, Kansas and California. Doubtful Hoover--153, including New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Wisconsin. Sure Roosevelt--168, including Missouri. Doubtful Roosevelt--79, including Indiana, Illinois, Washington, Nebraska. Total: Hoover--284; Roosevelt--247. Vigilantly nonpartisan, TIME will make no guess at the result of the election, take no sides in the campaign, report the political facts as they develop without fear or favor for either candidate.--ED.

Mr. Palmer & "Vague"

Sirs:

After reading the letter written by the Hon. A. Mitchell Palmer criticizing TIME'S use of the word "vague" in describing the Democratic platform (TIME, Aug. i), I became very much amused. It would be advantageous to the welfare of our country if leading American universities would offer instruction in logic and economics to our politically inclined friends.

HAROLD C. HICKMAN

Ellijay, Ga.

Indigentry

Sirs: In your issue of Aug. i you state that Burke's "Landed Gentry" is printing an addendum, or "second section tactfully entitled 'Dislanded Gentry'." Might I suggest, for the sake of brevity and clarity, that Burke's name their new edition-- "Indigentry."

D. M. HURLEY Southampton, N. Y.

Gratified Admiral

Sirs:

We all appreciate so much the article in TIME in the July n issue, entitled "The L. A. to pasture." The Bureau of Aeronautics has carried on with rigid airships not only because we believe that they will be of great value in time of war but especially because we feel sure that they will be of great value to the country commercially. Our opinion is based on knowledge and experience, and it is therefore very gratifying to have the support of such a magazine as TIME, in efforts which we believe will serve the country. We receive so many knocks, due largely to ignorance and lack of understanding, that it is most gratifying to know that the long and efficient service of the Los Angeles is appreciated.

W. A. MOFFETT Rear Admiral, USN Chief of Bureau Navy Department Bureau of Aeronautics Washington, D. C.

Maconians Flayed

Sirs:

Mr. John L. Morris, Manager, Chamber of Commerce, Macon, Ga. has a letter in your July 25 issue in which he advises that the Macon delegation waved no flags on the occasion of their visits to the plant in which the new Navy airship Macon is being built, in fact states that Maconians are no flag-wavers.

I am curious to know why he states this with so much apparent relish. Out & out pacifists might rejoice in refraining from waving the American flag, and if this is Macon's attitude, why name a fighting airship of the U. S. Navy after her?

M. K. VAN DUZOR Vicksburg, Miss.

Mrs. Boole

Sirs:

I am amazed to see in the columns of your very readable magazine reference in the July 18 number to the President of the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union as "crafty old Mrs. Ella Boole." Mrs. Boole is respected and admired by thousands for her statesmanlike leadership and wholehearted devotion to a great cause and the use of such disrespectful terms will only merit the contempt and disgust of decent people for the one who uses it.

IDA E. DAVIS Rochester, N. H.

Sirs:

You earn this week the thanks of both Wets and Drys by saying the W. C. T. U. has a "crafty old head" in Mrs. Ella A. Boole (TIME, July 18). You have furnished the Wets another opprobrious and abusive epithet for women, of whom you mention three, whose title to honor and respect no Wet seems able to understand.

The Drys should thank you for saying "crafty," acknowledging a mental process too subtle for your analysis. Every Dry will hope TIME'S clever penmen may live long enough to master the method and secret of Mrs. Boole. That craft has been good journalistic policy and may be again. Your attitude toward Mrs. Boole's policies and projects will always give her an advantage over you; for she is not working for her own profit or advantage.

JOHN MCCARTHY St. Louis Conference M. E. Church, South Kerrville, Tex.

"Old" to TIME is Mrs. Boole, aged 74. As a dextrous political strategist, she is "crafty" in the same sense as the late great Briand, Postmaster General Brown, Democratic Chairman Farley, Secretary of the Treasury Mills, Mayor Walker, New Hampshire's Senator Moses, Calvin Coolidge.--ED. Debt Challenge, (Cont'd) Sirs:

Allow me to second Mr. Webb's challenge and enter for the record these three exquisite paragraphs by Walter Lippmann:

"But the most interesting case is that of Senator McKellar. This ardent champion of making the foreigner pay regardless of the consequences is a representative of the State of Tennessee. According to the World Almanac, Tennessee is primarily an agricultural state producing lumber, tobacco, cotton, corn and cattle. In 1930 it appears that of the total American production of tobacco 40% was exported, of cotton nearly 45%, of lard about 29%. It is plain, then, that the prosperity of Tennessee is intimately dependent upon a flourishing foreign trade and upon a recovery of world prices.

"One would suppose that Senator McKellar of Tennessee would be greatly interested in every measure designed to improve the purchasing power of the outer world, that his chief and his constant concern would be the restoration of the world economy. But not at all. Senator McKellar's notion of how to serve the people of Tennessee is to treat their customers as if they were brigands. And to what end? That the United States Treasury should continue to exact from their customers payments which, if not received, must be borne by the taxpayers of the United States.

"But why is Senator McKellar so excited about these taxpayers? In 1931 his State contributed one-half of one percent of the Federal income tax. Obviously the interests of Tennessee in world recovery far surpass her interest in Federal taxes. When one remembers that a world recovery would instantly reduce the burden of taxes, it is really hard to see what Senator McKellar thinks he is doing for his own constituents or for anyone else."

FABIAN JOHNSON

Montclair, N. J.

Sirs:

Current news items on War Debts for years back have created a grossly exaggerated view of the size of international war debts. An example of this is contained in your editorial comment (TIME, Aug. 8). You state the present national wealth of the United States at $329,700,000,000 and you give the War Debts to the United States at $22,230,000,000. The present value of the national wealth is $329,700,000,000. The present value, on a 3 1/2% interest basis, of the payments totalling $22,230,000,000 which we are scheduled to receive is $7,500,000,000, approximately one-third of the figure which you mention. So you see that cancellation of the entire Allied War Debt instead of being 70?' out of every $100 of national wealth is only 20?' out of every $100 of national wealth. From this one may conclude that the sum total of the War Debts is such a trifling item that it cannot possibly be responsible for all the woes with which it is charged; or one may conclude that the total sum is so trivial that our attitude is analogous to attempting to sue our friend who borrowed from us last week a nickel for a telephone call.

MONTGOMERY BROWN New York City

St. Louis Horses

Sirs:

In the issue of your magazine of July 11, on p. 18 under the heading of Animals, there appears a footnote which reads as follows:

"Most of the horses used in Spain's bullfights, whose disembowelling so annoys U. S. tourists, are bought in St. Louis at $5 a head."

May we be allowed to explain that the horse market of the Middle West is not located in St. Louis, Missouri, but across the Mississippi River in East St. Louis, Illinois.

A great many letters have been received by this organization pertaining to this article, and we would appreciate any correction you would care to make in your magazine.

ERIC H. HANSEN

Managing Director The Humane Society of Missouri St. Louis, Mo.

Needleworker Joy

Sirs:

I have just been sent a clipping, with the information that it is from your magazine of July 18, as follows:

"With hands which are usually busy knitting, Chairwoman Mrs. Henry Bourne Joy, a motherly soul who is president of the Needlework Guild of America and whose husband used to run Packard Motor Car Co. in Detroit, took up a pencil and rapped on a table for order. Her signal got the attention of a potent segment of the nation's womanpower."

I am much annoyed by this as Mrs. Joy is not president of the Needlework Guild of America, she is not even president of one of its Branches, and I would like very much to have you correct this error. Mrs. Joy is a vice president of the Detroit, Mich. Branch of the Needlework Guild of America. Mrs. Thomas J. Preston Jr., the former Mrs. Grover Cleveland, is president of the Needlework Guild of America, and I am sure you will realize this is not a very pleasant kind of an error to come out in your magazine, for many of our 750 Branches of the Guild to see.

ROSAMOND K. BENDER

Executive Secretary

The Needlework Guild of America, Inc. Philadelphia, Pa.

Two-Timer

Sirs: I am a poor but honest employe of a Stock Exchange firm--trying to scratch out a living in a barnyard where worms are all but extinct. But regardless, I am preyed upon by a member of the firm, by name, Irving D. Rossheim, who early each Friday morning, at an hour wholly unnatural to him, comes to my desk and seizes my copy of TIME. And this, despite a copy which awaits him at home. Has a poor man no defense against such predatory action? Can I appeal to the U. S. Government? Can I appeal to the Editors of TIME to institute an advertising campaign (a la mode Buick Motors) advocating two-TiME families? If solicited, I am sure Mr. Rossheim would be proud to be the original two-TiMER. ROBERT S. THANHAUSER

Philadelphia, Pa.

Predatory Mr. Rossheim is hereby solicited to become a two-TiMER.--Ed.

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