Alaska Fiasco?

Sirs:

... I note in your issue of April 29 that there were several letters from Anchorage addressed to you concerning that town and its improvements. I happen to be the man who selected the town site of Anchorage, surveyed it, laid out the streets and put in public improvements, such as water and sewer systems etc., and managed the town from 1915 until 1919, when I was in the Government service.

If you will investigate the facts, you will find that this action of the Government in shipping these unfortunate people to the Territory of Alaska [TIME, May 6] is not only an absolute waste of money but a great injustice to the poor people that they are shipping there. . .

I can furnish you many details on Alaska if you are interested in exposing this fiasco.

A. CHRISTENSEN

Great Neck, N. Y.

Serving from 1909 to 1919 under four Secretaries of Interior (Garfield, Ballinger, Fisher, Lane) Andrew Christensen had charge of investigation of all public land matters in Alaska, notably the coal land cases which caused bitter controversy between Secretary Ballinger and Gifford Pinchot, then head of the Forest Service. Later he directed construction of the Alaska Railroad from Seward to Fairbanks.

To him Alaska is "the spoiled child of Uncle Sam," a place of impossible conditions, where there are no resources to justify a permanent population. Only profitable resource in the territory, according to Mr. Christensen, is fishing along the southern coast. Alaskan coal-- prime reason for building the railroad--is worthless. The few copper, quartz gold and placer mines will eventually be worked out.

As for agriculture, Mr. Christensen says that root crops do well because of the long days, but shipping costs preclude development of an outside market; and in his day, not even Alaskans could be persuaded to eat the soggy Alaskan potato. What with the hardships of clearing the land, the short summer season, the extremely cold winters, the plague of mosquitoes and other insects, Mr. Christensen considers the colonists' prospects so glum that the Government will be obliged to support them and eventually return them to the States.

In rebuttal Government officials insist that Alaska is self-sufficient without an outside market; that her placer mining offers plentiful jobs at $1 to $2 a day in nonfarming seasons, that the Alaska potato was good enough to be used during the War as a dining-car attraction on the Northern Pacific Railroad.--ED.

Head-First Habit Sirs:

I note in the April 29 issue of TIME under Medicine an article relating to the practice of sleeping with one's head forward on Pullman cars.

I cannot verify the truthfulness of the statement but I was informed by a responsible executive that the reason was that in case of a wreck the sleeper's head would come in contact with the steel partition which would naturally increase chances of an immediate death, the reason for this being that a number of States have laws which limit the liability of the rail-road in case of death but do not limit the liability in case of injury. . . .

MICHAEL ERSKINE

Philadelphia, Pa.

Sirs:

Fiddlesticks to all of Professor Laird's speculation about hemastatics and splanchnic pools! Fiddlesticks, too, to the A. M. A.'s visceral tensions!

I conducted a personal experiment years ago to determine the reason why Pullman sleepers ride headfirst. . . . The time came for the porter to make up our berths. Seeing that all of them were made up with the head forward, I determined to be different, rode feetfirst, awoke in the morning with a heavy deposit of cinders from the open window in my eyes, ears, mouth, nose. . . .

CHAS. R. RISE

Trenton, N. J.

Aware of the cinders-&-soot nuisance in early sleeping cars, Professor Laird considered that factor removed by modern fine-mesh screens in Pullman windows-- an assumption which many a traveler would dispute.--ED.

Sirs:

Shrewd Professor Donald Anderson Laird's query to the American Medical Association anent "a rational physiological explanation for having a Pullman passenger's head in the direction of motion" (TIME, April 29) is virtually identical in phraseology with a question put to Professor Laird last January in behalf of progress-minded Willis G. Gray, novelist-president of enterprising Scully-Walton Company, world's oldest (1882) and largest operators of private ambulances (New York, Brooklyn, The Bronx and London). . . .

An inquiry Mr. Gray initiated at that time . . . served to direct scientific and empiric thought toward a question which Mr. Gray's findings answered in precisely the same manner as did Professor Laird's. . . .

These are among the significant consequences of Mr. Gray's inquiry:

i) The Pullman Company, whose headforemost practice frankly originated with considerations of ventilation, contemplates a canvass of passenger preference in air-conditioned sleepers in which the ventilation factor does not prevail.

2) American Airlines, whose headforemost policy was born entirely of passenger comfort in planes out of level flight-attitude on the ground, now ascertains individual passenger preference before making up berths.

Professor Laird . . . now makes no mention of one prime practical consideration which helped convince Mr. Gray that recumbency . . . should be feetfirst; the materially lessened probability of severe injury in event of accident. . . .

LEE TRENHOLM

Public Relations Counsel New York City

Talmadge & Roosevelt

Sirs:

In the April 29 issue of your unique and interesting magazine you say, "That Georgia does not care so much for Franklin D. Roosevelt as it did in the bandwagon days of 1932 was proven last year when it overwhelmingly re-elected Democratic Governor Eugene Talmadge, on a violently anti-New Deal platform."

There was no anti-New Deal plank in Governor Talmadge's platform. His plea for reelection was based on the claim that he had fulfilled every pledge made in his 1932 campaign, and on his promise that if reelected, he would pay the State out of debt and further reduce taxes.

It is true that in the 1934 campaign his opponent and political enemies charged that he was antagonistic to the Roosevelt administration. The opposition to him collapsed when a statement was procured from one of the President's secretaries to the effect that Roosevelt would take no side in the Georgia campaign.

... I think that President Roosevelt is today more popular with the farmers of this agricultural State than he was in 1932, far less popular with the textile manufacturers, and fully as popular with the general public.

Many people think that Governor Talmadge is risking his political future on the hope and gamble that the policies of the Administration to restore prosperity will eventually fail, and that then the people will turn to him for leadership in national affairs.

A. J. LITTLE

Attorney at Law Valdosta, Ga.

Sirs:

Any honest-thinking Georgian knows that $3 automobile tags and an arbitrary 20% reduction in State ad valorem taxes caused Governor Talmadge's election sweep. . . .

Louis A. POWELL

Cairo, Ga.

SIRS: . . . Georgians are stronger for Franklin D. Roosevelt than ever since the Talmadge mouthings began. They are not so strong for the Governor as they were before. They feel that their executive who sprang from the soil has finally gone over to big business, Hearst and to the devil, to be frank. . . .

Now, when the Governor poses with one of his favorite mules, Georgians are inclined to inquire: ''Which is the mule?''

JAMES R. ADAMS

Atlanta, Ga.

Permission to Gloat

Sirs:

Many thanks for your splendid reviews of our pictures Les Miserables and Cardinal Richelieu (TIME, April 29). However, I must call to your attention one incorrect observation: Producer Zanuck came to New York to gloat over the success of Les Miserables and Richelieu. Facts are as follows: Producer Zanuck came to New York before either picture had opened to quiver and tremble and hope that the public and press would permit him to gloat. Strangely enough public and press were unanimous, thank Heaven. Otherwise this telegram would not have been sent, at least not from this magnificent, restful, awe-inspiring address.

DARRYL ZANUCK

Ketchikan, Alaska Cook's Amazement

Sirs:

Your article on King George V's Silver Jubilee [TIME, May 6, 13] calls to mind that "Long Live the King" is preceded by the doleful "The King is Dead." Yet I remember that on the evening of May 9, 1910, New York aristocracy boisterously celebrated with feasting and gaiety the funeral of Edward VII.

At the Plaza Hotel, where most of the commemorating seemed to take place, the various dining rooms were jammed with diners in strangely gay mood. Everybody was ordering the most expensive and the most exotic dishes. Champagne was practically the only beverage on every table and of that a fantastic abundance. From my humble post at the tail end of the cook's crew in the Plaza kitchen, then a French citadel, I viewed with amazement, tinged with dismay, the gaiety and feasting commemorating the death of the British Sovereign for I was a newly arrived young immigrant, unsophisticated, strange to the country, customs and language; accustomed to witness but melancholy and despair at death in my native land; believing as only an immigrant from a monarchistic country could believe that the doings of kings were anathema to republican America.

Irrational though such behavior seemed at the time--how else could Society, newly emancipated by Edward VII from stodgy Victorianism, memorialize the passing of its leader. . . . True in history he was King of all the Britons by the grace of God, (though actually by the grace of Parliament); Defender of the Faith--the English Faith--a Catholicism without a Pope (a title accorded to Henry VIII by the Pope); Emperor of India, living symbol and standard bearer of white civilization ruling over Asiatic peoples. But in life he was above all a gourmet; the symbol of the pleasures of life; dictator of modes; regulating all other ways of life to the way of enjoyment, and living to enjoy while living; beloved by the grand mondc of the Continent; inspiration of the chefs of the Savoy Hotel in creating the justly famous poulard Edward VII.

With his worldly smile, his instinctive savoir faire when fashions followed each other with bewildering rapidity, he made it possible for some of the piquancy of the Parisian world to trickle through the staid, stuffy circles of English aristocracy, justly rating TIME'S relegation to "dilettante Mayfair," but Edward VII lives in the hearts of lovers of good living and the archives of great cookery. Chefs all over the world, viewing with dismay the dullness of the fare at Buckingham Palace under George and Mary, sigh for the bon vivant Edward VII, whose passing, commemorated in such strange fashion by a democracy-professing American aristocracy of good living, ushered in the Reign now celebrating its Silver Jubilee.

PETER BORRAS

Host

Restaurant Madrillon Washington, D. C.

Jubilee

Sirs:

Let me tell you that I consider your editorial in the issue of May 6 on King-Emperor George V and the Jubilee one of the very finest pieces of work it has ever been my pleasure to read. . . . It is a masterpiece . . . one of those many reportings which make TIME not only pleasurable but indispensable to me and 499,999 or more other devotees.

JEFFERY A. CARQUEVILLE

Libertyville, Ill.

Sirs:

Sincere thanks for your write-up of the world's No. 1 Gentleman.

W. W. HUMPHREY

Sherbrooke, Que.

Sirs:

From the pages of TIME for May 6 leaps a leaf from the permanent history of the world, a keen documentation of George V's reign which may well rank with Hugo's description of Waterloo, Dickens' account of the fall of the Bastille. You are to be congratulated, Sirs, on a most able summary of an able monarch's rule. . . .

CHARLES CASSIL REYNARD

Girard, Ohio

Sirs:

Congratulations! TIME scores again. ... I have read reviews of the Silver Jubilee and the biography of George V in a number of magazines--but TIME'S account tops them all. As a former Canadian, I can say that you truthfully portray His Majesty as neither showman, dictator nor demagog. . . .

Your account shows George V not merely the force for union but the faithful servant of his people. He has endured, along with them, a quarter of a century that was the most crucial test of a nation's and a king's character. . . .

M. M. LACHOVITZ Cleveland, Ohio

George Rex's Business

Sirs:

. . . Some years ago, engaged in research in the economic geography of Jamaica, B. W. I., I sat one afternoon with a group of Britishers who were polite enough to ask my opinion of their principal city, Kingston. I had been there only a few days and was not ready with opinions, but ventured to observe that I had been struck by the apparent concentration of business in the hands of one principal merchant. What did I mean, they wanted to know. "Why," said I, as solemnly as possible, and with the Government mail wagons in mind, "the streets seem to be simply filled with the delivery wagons of this 'George V. Rex.'" After perceptible seconds came shrill laughter, pitying glances and, in rising tones (this verbatim): "Bah Jove . . . hah-hah . . . you know . . . hah-hah . . he means George the Fifth, King of England!'"

JOHN G. CURTIS

Erie, Pa.

Neylan's Loss

Sirs:

STATEMENT P. 51 YOUR APRIL 29 ISSUE "LAWYER NEYLAN HAS NEVER LOST A JURY TRIAL" ERRONEOUS. NEYLAN DAMN CLEVER LAWYER BUT LOST JURY CASE FOR LIBEL SOME TWO YEARS AGO, MONTEREY COUNTY, CALIF., BROUGHT BY ONE BAUGH AGAINST SAN FRANCISCO EXAMIXER.

E. B. SPOFFORD

San Francisco, Calif.

Justice of the Peace Ray Baugh of Monterey County sued Hearst's Examiner for $125.000 compensatory damages, $100.000 punitive damages on twelve counts of alleged libel. The jury found no libel, awarded $1 punitive damages. Individual jurors later explained that they wanted to save their fellow townsman the costs of the trial. Their zeal was misdirected, since Plaintiff Baugh was obliged to pay the costs anyway. Lawyer Neylan & Client Hearst considered disposal of a $225.000 suit for $1 net a distinct victory.--ED.

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