Plain People v. Pundits
Sirs:
WHO ARE THOSE FELLOWS LIPPMANN AND SULLIVAN? THE PLAIN PEOPLE NEVER HEARD OF THEM [TIME, Jan. 14]. ... ALL WE DO IS ASK THE OLD FOLKS TO CONSUME THE $20,000,000,000 ANNUAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHAT WE PRODUCE AND WHAT WE CONSUME SO THAT WE CAN HAVE BALANCED PROSPERITY. ... I THANK TIME FOR FAIR AND IMPARTIAL REPORTING BUT WISH YOU WOULDN'T PLAY UP THOSE HEAVYWEIGHT PROFOUND MINDS WHO CONFUSE THE PEOPLE BY THEIR ABSTRUSE THOUGHTS. ASK JOHN DOE FOR HIS VIEWS.
DR. F. E. TOWNSEND
Washington, D. C.
Sirs: If there are really 25,000,000 signatures to the petitions in favor of the so-called ''Townsend'' scheme, it merely confirms me in an opinion I have held for some time -- that the great majority of the inhabitants of this country are morons. . . . In this land of liberty (?) any addlepate can vote on an equal basis with his intelligent neighbor (if any), on any and all of the complex problems put before them. The result is that candidates for office are obliged, if they hope to be elected, to appeal to the moronic riff raff with all kinds of fool schemes and promises. . . . T. N. WALTON
Pittsburgh, Pa.
"Manurish Imaginations"
Sirs:
The invidious article which appeared in the Dec. 10 issue of TIME upon the subject of recent events in Egypt would not be of particular interest to me if it shamed only TIME'S editors, but unfortunately it has humiliated all Americans. . . .
If your information were true, instead of being a mass of manurish imaginations of someone obviously "nursemaid to a white ass," it would certainly be indecent and ungentlemanly of you to allow its publication in your pages. . . .
Fuad the First would considerably outrank most Americans in official life, in education. He speaks three languages fluently. He is not overly fat but, like most Egyptians, is heavy according to American standards. He compares favorably with other rulers of the East and Near East in sagacity and desire to rule his subjects fairly. By your informant's own admission, the King has not had a free hand to do as he chose.
I make no apology for my statements. I lived as this country's representative in Egypt for three years, during which time I had an unusual opportunity to know the King, his Cabinet and Egyptians. I have retained a favorable impression of him and of his country and I resent very much the vulgarity of your attack. W. M. JARDINE
President
The Municipal University of Wichita Wichita, Kans.
Does the onetime Secretary of Agriculture deny that, as TIME stated, "For seven long years His Majesty played the role of British puppet with a certain grace. distracting himself with such harmless amusements as riding around & around the royal gardens at Alexandria on a white ass"?--ED.
"Glitterlings"
Sirs:
A physician of my acquaintance, who has read on p. 47 of your Jan. 7 issue the account of the new bitterling test for pregnancy in woman, has asked me to inquire of you where he might obtain some bitterlings. . . .
M. C. CAPPER DeWitt, Iowa
Sirs: AM LARGE GOLDFISH MAN NEAR SAN FRANCISCO ALSO CONSCIENTIOUS TIME-READER. WOULD LIKE INFORMATION PLEASE BITTERLING CROSS WITH GOLDFISH RETAINING DESIRED CHARACTERISTICS BOTH FISH. BELIEVE POSSIBILITY NEW CALIFORNIA INDUSTRY CALL NEW FISH GLITTERLING. POSSESSION IN APARTMENT NOT EMBARRASSING. HAVE ALREADY DESIGN NEW GLITTERLING BOWL EASY APPLICATION MAGNIFIED OBSERVATION. ANXIOUSLY AWAIT REPLY.
I. NODA San Jose, Calif.
Let Reader Capper and Goldfishman Noda consult the New York Aquarium, only institution in the U. S. which regularly procures fish for medical purposes. The Aquarium would be obliged to import bitterlings from Europe or Asia, storing them free of charge until the purchaser was ready to accept delivery. New York's Saw Mill River was stocked with bitterlings ten years ago, but two years later they had disappeared.--ED.
Death & Taxes (Cont'd) Sirs:
It has occurred to me that Mr. D. J. Foss may not have given extended thought to his subject before writing his proposal which appeared in TIME under the heading of "Death and Taxes" [TIME, Dec. 31; Jan. 14]. . . .
1) A tax of 100% on the cost of burial would impose still one more burden on the impoverished masses. . . . Even now with the greatest of difficulty are these able to provide decent burials for their loved ones.
2) Such a tax would strike directly at the memorial idea to which civilization owes many of its enduring monuments, paintings, sculptures, buildings, schools, museums, parks, etc.
3) Such a tax would tend to stifle one of the most spiritual qualities that by its innate strength derived from its roots in the hearts of its people has survived against mean and mercenary commercialism throughout the ages. . . . RUFUS B. VON KLEINSMID
President
University of Southern California Los Angeles, Calif.
Sirs:
I wish to second the motion of D. J. Foss. Nothing is more wasteful, futile and oppressive than the conventional disposition of the dead in this country. . . .
Life insurance companies today know how principals of policies are swept away in the sentimental exhibitionism of relatives intent upon glorious burial of mortal clay.
"The majesty of death" is made a mockery by the ugliness of the typical American cemetery with its piles of hideous stones. . . .
The disposition of bodies should be a State responsibility as surely as other functions related to public health.
. . . Paraphrasing Henry Morley, for purposes of ambition living men may be blown asunder at the cannon's mouth, cut up with sword or ax, or probed with military lances, but no rational disposition may be made of dead men.
CLARK KINNAIRD
Jackson Heights, N. Y.
Controversy over Subscriber Foss's proposal to tax funerals out of existence will be continued in LETTERS, Jan. 21 et seq. (see p. 9).--ED.
U. S. Scene
Sirs:
. . . I'm afraid I'm too late for a much-desired copy of the Dec. 24 color insert. If there are still some left I'd tremendously like to have one.
You may be interested to know that my mother, who is an artist, and a good one, was most enthusiastic about your write-up of American painting. As for me I'd rather own Dinner for Threshers than any picture I've ever seen. . . .
EDWARD G. HUEY
Baltimore, Md.
The 2,500 reprints of the U. S. Art color insert, offered to TIME-readers Jan. 7, were exhausted in less than two days. TIME will print 5,000 additional copies to be distributed free to first-comers. Address Circulation Department, TIME Inc., 350 East 22nd Street, Chicago, Ill.
Additional letters challenging the accuracy of Grant Wood's Dinner for Threshers, with rejoinders by Artist Wood, appear in the Jan. 21 issue of the fortnightly LETTERS (see p. 9).--ED.
Altered Oregonian
Sirs:
Thank you for your very lucid explanation of the Oregonian's recent metamorphosis [TIME, Jan. 7]. This is a matter which has not been explained in this section. . . .
Editorially, the Oregonian is still reactionary. Announcing itself Independently Republican after November 1932, the Oregonian has only reverted to the Saterepost school of Administration sniping. The Oregonian has lost most of its political prestige. . . . SAM MITCHELL
Junction City, Ore.
Sirs:
We are very grateful to TIME for exposing the person responsible for the lamentable face-lifting of our once excellent newspaper, the Oregonian. . . .
WILLIAM S. TARRINGTON
Portland, Ore.
Cutts Compensator
Sirs:
... I wish to call attention to the following paragraph on p. 9, in your issue of Dec. 24:
"Eager also to make things hot for the Administration, the Committee pried out of a Marine Corps lieutenant who served as a White House aide last year an admission that he made tentative but fruitless efforts to set himself up in the business of selling arms to foreign countries."
The casual reader can form only one inference and that is that I, as a lieutenant in the Marine Corps and a White House aide, made use of my position to attempt to peddle guns to foreign countries. . . .
The true facts are as follows: I, with my father, the late Colonel R. M. Cutts, are the long-time inventors of the Cutts Compensator, a device which reduces recoil and improves gun patterns. It has a large application in the sporting field on shotguns and rifles, as evidenced in our advertisement in your magazine of recent issue.
In 1926 the Compensator was offered to the U. S. Government and at that time was not accepted, so that it became necessary to file foreign and additional domestic patents to protect the invention. Since then, its efficiency having been proven, the Compensator has been in use by the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and the Department of Justice.
The assignment to duty as a White House aide was entirely a routine assignment and had no connection with the case whatsoever.
We have never attempted to sell guns at any time. . . .
R. M. CUTTS JR.
Washington, D. C.
Little Episode Sirs:
In your issue of Dec. 31, you published an alleged account of the trial of E. K. Harris, a Negro, on a charge of rape, in the Circuit Court of Bedford County, Tenn. . . .
This article was read by many of our citizens, who considered it so slanderous, and such a perversion of the facts, that I have been asked to answer it. ...
Said article states:
1st--''Last week Tennessee wiped away its 13-year-old stain with the blood of four white men." This is absolutely untrue, as at this trial there existed no race prejudice.
2nd--It says, Lillian Gibson, a Tennessee hill-girl of 15, went to school at Stump Valley, near Shelbyville, started home from school-- later her teacher said she came running frantically back . . . screaming, "I am going to have a baby." This is absolutely untrue, in that this little girl does not live in the hills--not a Tennessee hill-girl. There is no such school as "Stump Valley." The teacher never made the statement that the little girl said, "I am going to have a baby." These statements are untrue.
3rd--It says, that John Gibson, the father, with a wrathful posse of 300 hillmen scoured the woods, caught the 22-year-old Negro, named E. K. Harris, accused of the rape, and took him to the Shelbyville Jail, and a hillbilly mob demanded Harris be turned over to them. These statements are untrue. . . . There was no hillbilly mob. Mr. Gibson is not a hillbilly. . . .
5th--The article further says: Mr. Gibson is dubbed as "Father Gibson," and says he inflamed his mountain neighbors by telling them that Dr. Moody, who is also dubbed, "a general practitioner of Shelbyville," had told him that the girl was pregnant. This is untrue. . . .
There was no disorderly conduct in the Court room from anyone at the trial until an adjournment for lunch, and then in a skirmish of some who apparently wanted to get admittance into the Court Room to hear the trial, against the orders of the National Guards to keep everybody out, and in trying to break the lines some were shot. . . .
It is greatly deplored that the Court House was burned, as well as the Government trucks; but the records in the Court House were not burned, as charged in the article, and this, it is not believed here, was done by Bedford County citizens; but was the result of a communistic spirit that has been cropping out in this section; but supposed to be by men coming in here to obtain work in the various mills and factories from the hot beds of communism, now existing in some of the Northern States, namely, New York City and Chicago. These Northern cities, where exists hot beds of Communists, Bolshevists, rackateers and gangsters, and in poor grace, to be so unfair as to make such charges as appears in this article referred to--about the little episode in Shelbyville--making a mountain out of a molehill. . . .
People of Tennessee are peculiarly an Anglo-Saxon Race, and ranks seven-tenths among the States of the Union in population--rich in agriculture, minerals, etc.; but the wealth of the State does not consist alone of its manufacturing enterprises, richness of its soil, the congeniality of its climate; but rather in the quality of its people. . . .
If you wish to know who the writer of this article is, I am a Lawyer, and I was appointed by the Court as one of the Lawyers to represent the defendant.
I have practiced in this State for 40 years. I am a Republican, and a recent Republican Candidate for Congress from this District--was U. S. Commissioner for the Middle District of Tennessee for more than 20 years. . . . W. H. CROWELL Shelbyville, Tenn.
Man of the Year
Sirs:
AM ASTOUNDED BY YOUR PICKING ROOSEVELT AS MAN OF THE YEAR, HE IS MORE BITTERLY HATED THAN ANY PRESIDENT SINCE JACKSON. THOUSANDS CURSE HIM AS A TRAITOR FOR HIS RAPE OF THE CONSTITUTION. THE VERY RICH AND POOR MAY GET RICHER BUT THE GREAT MIDDLE CLASS SCARE THEIR CHILDREN WITH ROOSEVELT'S NAME.
ARTHUR C. O'CONNOR JR.
Detroit, Mich.
Sirs:
HURRAH FOR THE MAN OF THE YEAR.
JOHN KIRKEBY San Luis Obispo, Calif.
Sirs:
Thank you for your "Man-of-the-Year" twaddle. Its fact-distorting, dogmatic assertiveness in a field of justifiable difference of opinion is an eye-opener. . . .
Don't you think that the tone of your ''Man-of-the-Year" article, and your gallingly unfair treatment of the views of American business leaders and economists are ill-becoming a so-called newsmagazine? You have shaken my confidence in your trustworthiness. . . .
THOMAS H. GREENE New York City
Sirs:
. . . My plaint is not that you picked Roosevelt . . . but that your reasons for doing so were the silliest that have ever blotted TIME'S pages. You picked Roosevelt, because, forsooth, more people than ever before voted the straight Democratic ticket. Why . . . didn't you say simply that you picked Roosevelt as ''Man of the Year" because, in spite of the tremendous pressure under which he labored, he has remained the same cultured, affable, and above all, sane gentleman that was elected President in 1932, and who during 1934 has done his level best to pull the country out of a hole? . . .
JOSEPH H. SPEAR
Dobbs Ferry, N. Y.
Reader Spear it was who opened ''Man-of-the-Year" nominations with a wager of a TIME subscription on France's late Louis Barthou, rejected by the editors on the primary ground of death.--ED.
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