Croppers' Misery
Sirs:
The stories which the Caldwells, father and son, have told of share croppers in Georgia may, as you point out in your issue of March 25, be true of a biologically degraded 1%. The misery of share croppers in Georgia or in Arkansas is not confined to this degenerate minority. In Arkansas 410 spokesmen for families out of a total attendance at four meetings of 1,719 persons told me that they had neither crops to make nor jobs to work at. Food allowances on which from 10-c- to 20-c- on the dollar extra is charged are held to about $2 a week for a share cropper's family by the plantation owner. Houses are worse than poultry houses on well-kept farms. A family showed me relief which it was told must last for 30 days-- there were seven in that family. Its stores consisted of 8 cans of evaporated milk, 5 cans of processed beef, one 24-lb. bag of flour, one 24-lb. bag of meal and a paper package of nondescript meat, weighing perhaps two or three pounds. This family--white, by the way--had just been dumped down by the side of a country highway, because a father had dared unsuccessfully to invoke "the law" against the riding-boss who had seduced and kidnapped his 14-year-old daughter. . . .
The plantation system in the cotton country is the most damnable thing in the U. S., and the operation of the cotton reduction program has added immensely to the woes of a large proportion of tenants who have been cut adrift or reduced to an even lower circle of hell as casual day laborers at 60-c- to 75-c- a day when there is extra work. The whole Administration at Washington turns all complaints over to Mr. Chester Davis, author of the recent purge in the Department of Agriculture, and ardent disbeliever that there is anything wrong in the cotton country, at least anything for which he is responsible.
NORMAN THOMAS New York City Pulitzer Cub
Sirs:
The story about Randolph Apperson Hearst's debut as a cub reporter on his father's San Francisco Examiner (TIME, March 18), reminds me of young Joe Pulitzer's experience under Charlie Chapin on the New York Evening World.
When the elder Pulitzer thought it about time for his namesake to go to work and learn the newspaper business he sent him to Chapin with a note which read: "Treat him just like any of your other boys. I trust you to make a capable man of him."
Chapin . . . sent young Joe to the Criminal Courts building where I was holding down the Evening World detail . . . with a message that I was to treat him as his father desired and not to let him loaf. Chapin told me: "If he is late mornings give him hell. He's no better than any other cub." The first day Joe was an hour late. I covered him that day telling Chapin when he inquired for him shortly after 8 a. m., that Joe was busy in the police court. The next morning Chapin, prompt at eight o'clock, wanted Joe. Joe was not on hand and Chapin told me to have him "give him a ring" when he arrived. Joe came along an hour or two later and when he got Chapin on the phone he was told to report to the office at once. There he got the call of his life, so he afterward told me. Chapin: "Young man there is one thing I won't stand for and that is being late. I have phoned your valet that he must have you out of bed earlier. I told him to buy an alarm clock to get you up. The next time you are late I'll fire you. That's all."
Joe returned to the Criminal Courts building and ever after during the months that he was with me never shirked his work or gave Chapin any further cause for a call down. That is why he is today a newspaper superman of St. Louis. BOB WILKES New York City
Navy Brains
Sirs:
The enemy battle line is sighted! The various problems connected with the production of accurate gunfire are upon us. To quote from the Article "Three-Ton Brain" in the Science section of TIME, March 18: "Naval engineers might wrestle with their ballistics equations for months to correlate these factors. The machine can do in five minutes what it takes five naval engineers four months to do on paper."
What a picture! What a play for the headlines! Four whole months to follow the computations of these lethargic naval "engineers" plying their logarithm tables and slide rules, searching for ballistic truths which will permit the firing of the guns. Can you imagine the sensation which would ensue when the headlines read, after three months of assiduous computations: "BOTH FLEETS DECLARE TWO WEEKS TRUCE FOR FUELING AND PROVISIONING. COMPUTATIONS WILL BE CONTINUED AT FEVER HEAT. NAVAL EXPERTS BELIEVE THE PROBLEM IS NEARLY SOLVED."
. . . May I take this opportunity to correct this implication of gross inefficiency on part of our Naval gunnery experts. Designer Travis little dreams of the factors which enter into our ballistic problem. Does he realize that if they were to use as much as five minutes in the solution of their problems, we would find our fleet subjected to a destructive fire from an opposing battle line? . . .
Let TIME-readers and the U. S. public rest assured that should occasion ever demand, our guns will speak in less than four months after our ships square off with an opposing force. . . . J. H. Dickins Lieutenant, U. S. N. Department of Naval Science Yale University New Haven, Conn.
Lieut. Dickins indulges in an absurd reductio ad absurdum. As he ought to know, the "three-ton brain" would be used not in battle but months before, to work out tables ready for instant use by gunnery officers when "ships square off with an opposing force."--ED.
Sirs:
No ballistician, TIME'S Science writer erred pardonably in assigning "drift of waves" as one of the factors affecting the trajectory of a projectile fired at long range from a battleship.
What he probably meant was "drift," by which is meant the gyroscopic precessive motion of the projectile to the right of the plane of the initial trajectory. This drift to the right increases with the range, and obeys definite scientific laws. . . .
The only effect the sea waves may conceivably have is an indirect one: inevitably they affect the course and speed of the firing ship, and thus, indirectly, the initial velocity of the projectile.
... I have read your magazine ever since I entered the Naval Academy (in 1928) and have always enjoyed it thoroughly. This letter is written in the interests of scientific accuracy, rather than as ostentatious carping criticism. RICHARD S. MANDELKORN Ensign, U. S. N. Cambridge, Mass.
When firing from a moving ship, both drift of projectile and drift of vessel must be taken into account.--ED.
"Biased Biography"
Sirs:
Under Greece (TIME, March 25, p. 24) you printed three columns of irrelevant non-sense and you have made yourselves unique by saying that in 1821 "Greece was a servile . . . province." The Greeks have their faults but they are not and never have been "servile.". . .
Greece has been redeemed by the Greeks who fought and bled for every inch of it, and not "through the benevolence of the Great Powers." You must be naive indeed to assign such idealism to these powers, who, for their gain, have created in Greece such internal antagonisms and hatreds that it will take many generations to wipe out. It is now history how during the War they financed Venizelos to set up a rebel government in Saloniki by promising that great diplomat territories which they had already assigned by secret treaty to Russia. After the War, in the Greek Asia Minor Expedition, France showed again her "benevolence" by secretly supplying munitions and officers to the Turks, thus causing the defeat of her Greek Allies.
. . . Having found nothing to write that would give some insight into the recent Greek rebellion, you come out with a biased biography of a traitor whose latest idol is the Handsome Adolf and who imitated him with a Putsch. . . . S. D. Vinieratos Hampton, Va.
"Fair, Faithful"
Sirs:
May we offer a note of appreciation of the eminent fairness, faithful historic recording and informative handling of your several stories in recent editions concerning the late Greek difficulties, particularly for the excellent report on March 25 (114th anniversary of Greece's independence from Turkey) captioned ''Farewell to Venizelos." We are certain that Venizelists and Tsaldarists alike in this country are grateful for such reporting. DR. MARC WILKINSON Retired Governor American-Hellenic Educational Progressive Association Pueblo, Colo.
Slam
Sirs:
IF LITTLE SLAM BONUSES REMAIN AS BEFORE, THEN TIME IS WRONG BECAUSE A LITTLE SLAM VULNERABLE HAS NEVER BEEN 1,000 BUT 750. IF I AM WRONG WIRE ME COLLECT.
ALBERT G. PETTINGILL San Francisco, Calif.
For Subscriber Pettingill, no telegraph tolls. For an erring copyreader, rebuke. --ED.
Savory Banks
Sirs:
In your article on Paterson, N. J. labeled "Debt & Taxes" (TIME, March 18), you say that "around those mills [silk mills] on the unsavory banks of the Passaic have been waged some of the bitterest and bloodiest strikes in U. S. history."
The banks of the Passaic are no longer unsavory. In 1924 there was completed the Passaic Valley trunk sewer, at a cost of $24,000,000, Paterson's share being $4,000,000, which takes the sewage of Paterson and other North Jersey municipalities in a subterranean duct and discharges it in lower New York Bay at Robins Reef. Numerous dye shops of Paterson are no longer allowed to discharge their waste in the river and the stream is now clear and without odor.
The strikes, while involving large numbers of people, have not been bitter and bloody. According to the Paterson police there has been only one death in labor troubles since 1894. . . .
FRANK J. DAVIES Counsellor at Law Paterson, N. J.
September Morn's Trail
Sirs:
Your account of how the painting by Paul Chabas entitled September Morn rose to fame (TIME, March 18) is not as complete as that given by Harry Reichenbach in an article he wrote for the Jan. 23, 1926 issue of Liberty, called Fame Made To Order.
Mr. Reichenbach implies that September Morn is very poor art indeed, and that it owes its fame only to the Comstock episode, which was really a publicity stunt engineered by himself. According to Mr. Reichenbach he was hired by the Russman Art Corp. to publicize the picture. His way of doing so was to hire ten boys and girls to stand in front of the window in which the painting was on display, while he visited Comstock and induced the latter to come and view the shocking spectacle of youth being corrupted. For this, Mr. Reichenbach says, he was paid only $45, out of which he had to pay his helpers 50-c- apiece. BROOKE ALEXANDER Princeton, N. J.
Sirs:
. . . You tell an interesting story of the disappearance of the famous painting September Morn and quote a statement from Paul Chabas, who painted it, to the effect that the picture has disappeared after it was sold to a Russian collector some years ago.
In May, 1923 my wife and I were entertained at dinner in Paris by Myron T. Herrick, who was at that time our Ambassador to France. After the dinner, when we had all risen from the table, he asked me whether I remembered that Anthony Comstock, that New York vice man, had caused the arrest and imprisonment of a humble shopkeeper for displaying in his window an engraving entitled September Morn. Upon my replying in the affirmative, he said, "Come in here, I want to show you something." We followed him into the drawing room, and there upon the wall was the original oil painting of September Morn, representing a nude girlish figure in all the charm and beauty of youth, standing with her feet in the water and shivering with a delicious innocence as the cold waves lapped her ankles. When we had all admired the beautiful picture, ''Isn't it a shame--" he said, "Isn't it a shame--" repeating the word, "that hypocrisy and fanaticism can go so far in our country!"
I cannot of course say whether September Morn is still in the possession of Mr. Herrick's family but what I have told you may throw some light upon the search which is being made for it.
SAMUEL HARDEN CHURCH President The Carnegie Institute Pittsburgh, Pa.
Paris art connoisseurs believe the late Ambassador Herrick was mistaken. He occupied the house of the Due de Broglie, whose brother owned many a Chabas painting of bathing nudes but not September Morn. But TIME is indebted to Subscriber Church and to an anonymous TIME-reader for helping pick up September Morn's trail which previously stopped dead at Moscow. Thither the painting had been taken by Leon Mantacheff, who bought it in 1912 for 50,000 francs. After the Russian Revolution it mysteriously disappeared. TIME'S informant reported that as recently as 1929 he had seen September Morn in Mantacheff's Paris home, that Mantacheff related how he smuggled the canvas out of Russia. Last week newshawks in Paris found Mantacheff, learned he had sold the painting a year ago for 90,000 francs to Calouste Sartis Gulbenkian, a naturalized Briton, born in Armenia, who made a fortune by wangling a 5% share in the Irak oil concessions (TIME, Dec. 12, 1932). September Morn hangs in his home at No. 51 Avenue Sena. Said Mr. Gulbenkian's secretary: "Please be kind enough to tell the world that Mr. Gulbenkian has no intention of selling the painting and does not want to be bothered with prospective purchasers." Exulted white-haired Artist Chabas, with tears in his eyes: "I am enchanted to know that the painting is unharmed."--ED.
Job Well Done
Sirs:
Congratulations to TIME for the Army & Navy section in the issue of March 25. It is entirely unique, because it is entirely accurate. The thinking citizen can better understand what we are, what we have, and what we seek to achieve as a result of that article which is certain to be widely read.
Your kindly and understanding comments about General MacArthur will be especially pleasing to those who have taken the trouble to ascertain the facts about his handling of the 1932 Bonus Army. For doing a job well which he was ordered to do, for doing it in person which he need not have done, he has taken a great deal of criticism in silence, like the fine soldier he is.
RUSSEL B. REYNOLDS Captain, 22nd Infantry Warm Springs, Ga.
Butcher Boy & Vile Business
Sirs:
It seems that even TIME is becoming infected with the accursed virus of jingoism, and its twin brother, militarism.
Anyway, the front cover of your issue of March 25 comes forth with a swell-looking picture of America's No. 1 Butcher Boy. and practically all of pp. 15, 16, 17 and 18 is devoted to America's part in the World's Vilest Business. . . .
DUANE MAGILL Grand Junction, Colo.
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