Blast & Brake
Sirs:
In TIME, Aug. 12, Cecil P. Brown of Portland, Maine, expresses appreciation of Harold Keates Hales, M. P. "as a great and progressive human" in that he claims to be the only automobile driver in the world who has never once blown his horn.
I wonder what horn-ignoring Harold Keates Hales has done if and when, while driving, he has met a car coming across the road towards him with its driver looking off to the side and not realizing that he has changed the course of his car.
I would like to ask horn-hating Cecil P. Brown if he has ever turned a corner to find his way completely blocked by playing children. Or has he come upon unmindful chickens or dogs, which I find usually respond to a horn's blast and scamper aside to safety.
I would also like to know how many collisions the "great and progressive" Harold Keates Hales, M. P. has had during his sans signal career.
Being one who detests needless horn-blowing, I still maintain there are times when the blast is quite as necessary as the brake.
PAUL BAILEY Amityville, N. Y.
Sirs:
. . . Any man who lives in the U. S. and has driven a car for years without having ever sounded his horn is either a bit absent-minded or he is not fit to drive a car. Many many fatal accidents have occurred because no warning was given. It is better to annoy a pedestrian or motorist than to kill him. . . .
Of course, in a crowded city there is less excuse lor needless horn-blowing, but I feel sure that nearly everyone has owed his life at one time or another to the timely blast of an automotive horn. I uphold the saying "Rely on your brakes instead of your horn," but that axiom does not always apply. How does noiseless Mr. Brown expect to pass a lumbering motor truck on a narrow road? The driver would be only too glad to pull over if he knew someone wished to pass. IT IS NOT ONLY DISCOURTEOUS BUT DANGEROUS TO TRY TO PASS A CAR WITHOUT LETTING THE DRIVER KNOW.
Perhaps this does not apply in Great Britain, but it certainly does in New York State.
WARREN R. PERRINS Rochester, N. Y.
"What is Marblehead?"
Sirs:
I am a Marbleheader, which means that I was born in Marblehead, Mass., as were my parents, my grandparents, my great-grandparents and a generation or two before them. That's the only way you become a Marbleheader, for as our local newspaper once remarked, in the obituary notice of a gentleman who died in his ninety-second year--"He was not a Marbleheader, as he was born in Danvers, although his parents brought him to this town when an infant six months of age."
Your story in TIME, Aug. 12 is swell, but when you refer to Marblehead as a "smug Boston suburb," it's just too bad. Imagine Marblehead a suburb of anything!
What is Marblehead? One historian states: "The Pilgrims came to Plymouth and the Puritans came to Boston that they might have freedom to worship God after the dictates of their own consciences, but the first settlers of Marblehead came to catch fish." Another relates: "In the days when Salem dominated the China trade, and when nearly every boy in his 'teens was familiar with a dozen ports in the Orient, it was still a hardy youth, who dared explore the bounds of Marblehead, which spiritually as well as geographically turned a stony back side to her neighboring port."
Only a few years ago, a member of Marble-head's Honorable Board of Selectmen, after listening to the legalistic and statutory arguments of one of Boston's most Brahmin barristers in a suit between the town and a socialite yacht club, disposed of the matter with the remark: "That's all right, but what in hell's the laws of Massachusetts got to do with Marble-head?" Unofficially an Attorney General of the State later indicated a certain sympathy with the Selectman's position.
"Smug!" Never. The painted Spirit of '76 hangs in Marblehead and the true Spirit of 1776 lives there. The U. S. Navy Department has officially recognized Marblehead as the birthplace of the American Navy and has erected a tablet stating this fact. General John Glover's amphibious regiment of fishermen rowed Washington across the Delaware. Marbleheaders manned Old Ironsides in her victorious voyages. In 1863, so many Marbleheaders were in the Union ranks, that the Governor of Massachusetts actually asked that no more of her men enlist, lest the breed become extinct. They didn't obey the Governor, but there are still sons and grandsons in plenty. . . .
ERNEST GREGORY
Darien, Conn.
All thanks to Marbleheader Gregory for an able footnote on his native town.--ED. Penmen
Sirs: Your article on Mr. Sheaffer's birthday (TIME, Aug. 5) is so full of carefully worded half-truths as to almost read like a paid Sheaffer advertisement. This is particularly true of the statement, "... in 1913 most fountain pens clogged, scratched, leaked or had to be filled with a medicine dropper," implying as it does to any except the most careful and fully informed reader that Mr. Sheaffer, his patent and company are largely responsible for the present day fountain pen. The truth is: that dirty pens still clog: damaged and tampered with points still scratch and whether a pen of any standard make leaks is largely up to the user--as was true in 1913. The dropper-filled pen was already passing (although still sold even today) in 1913 when Mr. Sheaffer changed from a jeweler to a penman. For over five years Waterman's had been manufacturing sac self-fillers (with a bar, but no lever) and other companies for even longer. Today there are probably more pens in use equipped with the "Rider" box & lever self-filler, which also dates from 1913, than those made under the Sheaffer patent.
Parker Pen Co. was the first to feature in their national advertising a high-priced pen-- one at $7, in a market where 10% of the pens retailed from $5 to $250. (Up to 1920, $2.75 was the most popular price.) Sheaffer improved on the idea--adding $1.75 for insurance and claiming his was guaranteed for a lifetime.
So-called "Streamlined" pens date from the 19th Century. The "Feathertouch'' nib is the Waterman "Duopoint" nib (patented 1915) gone platinum blonde and the Vacuum Fil looks suspiciously like the old English "Onoto" (nicknamed Ought-not-to) which perhaps dates from before the Sheaffer lever self-filler and revived by Sheaffer to compete with the Parker transparent barrel "Vacumatic," the Conklin "Nozac." . . . FRANK PALMER
Chattanooga, Tenn.
TIME'S story of Sheaffer's birthday celebration was not intended to be a survey of the pen business. Parker Pen Co. is No. 1 in the industry, in which Waterman, Conklin, Wahl Eversharp, Sheaffer rank high. TIME erred in ascribing to Sheaffer 1929 profits higher than Parker. Parker net profits in 1929 were $1,183,542.46.
--ED. Handsome
Sirs:
TIME, Aug. 12, Medicine, under "Nerve Congress":
. . . McGill University's handsome Dr. Wilder Graves Penfield. . . .
From handsome Dr. Max Minor Feet of the University of Michigan. . . .
Handsome Dr. Richard Max Brickner of Manhattan. . . .
. . . the Mayo Clinic's handsome senior brain surgeon, Dr. Alfred Washington Adson. . . .
Is the medical profession becoming noted for the beauty of its male followers? Or has it always been so? ...
J. B. GAYLORD
Zionsville, Ind.
Sirs:
. . . Do neurotic young ladies go to these surgeons because they want relief or because the surgeons are handsome? Again, would there be fewer neurotic young ladies if the surgeons were less handsome? . . .
SOPHIA POTGIETER
Steamboat Rock, Iowa
Sirs:
. . . These are earnest, hard-working surgeons, not beauty contestants.
OTTO V. TILTON
Sioux City, Iowa Sirs: I am wondering who the susceptible reporter is who covered the "Nerve Congress." Is she blonde or brunette and are all doctors of the Adonis type merely because they are doctors? I know a large number of doctors--and psychiatrists--of national renown, and I sincerely believe there is none among the group who has the faintest concern for his personal beauty.
JUDITH HAWLEY WINANS
Dallas, Tex.
Does any TIME reader contend that Drs. Penfield, Peet, Brickner or Adson is not handsome? A standing joke among U. S. physicians is the inexplicable fact that most U. S. brain surgeons are notably good looking.--ED.
Medical Brickbats
Sirs:
I read with much interest in TIME, Aug. 12, a letter from Dr. H. Maxwell Langdon in reference to cortin and glaucoma, and holding the opposite view from that of Dr. Langdon I dash madly to the rescue of beleaguered TIME. . . .
The so-called Old Guard in the profession of medicine believes that medicine should continue to be shrouded in the mystery of the Dark Ages; and that the layman has no business knowing what it is all about. If the doctor hands a patient a prescription written in the best medical Latin, it is the duty of aforesaid patient to hotfoot it to the closest apothecary shop: have same duly compounded as the Great Man has ordained; and take T.I.D. [ter in die, "thrice a day"] strictly according to directions. Not his to reason why. His but to get well if Mother Nature is willing; or to die.
But many of us so-called radical or progressive members of the medical profession are foolhardy enough to brave the wrath of the Old Guard of medicine--maybe it is a martyr complex or something--and speak right out in meeting.
I think both with law and medicine the public is entitled to know the essentials in lay language of any and of all new developments. All advances in medicine and surgery are experimental in nature until proven by time and experience and I think the more intelligent of our people understand this; certainly the class of people who read magazines such as TIME belong in this category.
There is more "professional" jealousy to the square inch in the practice of medicine than in any other vocation that I know of; all any doctor has to do is to announce some new and possibly better development in medicine or surgery and he will spend as much time dodging professional brickbats as he will in catching the few and far between bouquets from colleagues. I know this from sad experience, having had the temerity some years back of announcing a bigger and better operation for removal of the tonsils.
J. B. H. WARING, M.D.
Wilmington, Ohio.
Sirs:
It is obvious from Professor Langdon's letter in the last issue of TIME [Aug. 12] that he has fallen into the error of confusing adrenaline and the adrenal cortex hormone. . . . Indeed, adrenaline has long since been abandoned by many ophthalmologists as a dangerous drug in glaucoma. . . .
The accurate scientific reporting of TIME and of the lay press deserves the congratulations and thanks of both the public and the medical profession. For in these days of depression and low income, and of high cost of medical publications, many scientists and physicians have learned to rely upon the accurate scientific reports of such publications as TIME for keeping abreast of advances in science and medicine. In this manner you are rendering a signal service to the public, to science and to medicine. I hope that you will not permit yourself to be deterred from continuing to render such service by any biased or unenlightened criticism, or any self-interested attempts of censorship by individuals or groups.
EMANUEL M. JOSEPHSON, M.D.
New York City
Sirs:
You are surely off your trolley in your reply to Dr. Langdon's letter (TIME, Aug. 12).
Public hopes will "rise or fall" on what they read in TIME and not on what Dr. Josephson et al., write for scientific publications.
You have acquired an amazing public acceptance and the responsibility is yours.
RAYMOND D. MILLER, M. D.
Veterans' Home of California Napa County, Calif.
Sirs:
. . . There is hardly an active member of the Fourth Estate who has missed stubbing his toe or bruising his knuckles upon ethical bugaboos of medicine and science. The reporter is most likely to be damned if he does report and doubly damned if he doesn't. This is a rather sad and unreasonable state of affairs. As a newspaper reporter, and more recently as a magazine reporter, I have time & time again felt the cool breath of informed disdain, however long and conscientiously I may have striven to report accurately and sympathetically. If this fate were peculiar to me, it could be accounted for quite handily upon grounds of dunderheadedness and dissipated I.Q. Hut since I have few reporter or editorial acquaintances who have escaped such visitations, I gather that it is a perennial problem, not only to the trades of journalism, but to all allied or competitive industries of public entertainment.
By enforcing competent standards of reporting and presenting the products thereof in a direct and forthright manner, regardless of the cobweb strands and musty rituals of the learned professions, TIME deserves wholehearted congratulations.
CHARLES MORROW WILSON
Newfane, Vt.
Venable v. Joe T.
Sirs:
I read with amusement the letter of J. Rosser Venable regarding Joe T. Robinson's coming fight (?) for relection as was published in TIME, Aug. 12. Doubtless this letter has a political tinge of which TIME is unaware. J. Rosser Venable, though defeated in past years for Lieutenant Governor and Governor of Arkansas, has announced that he intends to be a candidate for Robinson's Senate seat in the coming elections (1936). Well will over-zealous J. Rosser Yenable realize after this election that Joe T.'s name still draws votes in Arkansas.
HAROLD RUSSELL JR.
Hot Springs, Ark.
Sirs:
. . . You print a letter [Aug. 12] from J. Rosser Venable of Little Rock, concerning what he terms as "Wall Street Joe Robinson." Better check up on Yenable. a man who runs for some office or other practically every election, and who is defeated by the voters each time he runs. Only this week he has announced that he will run against Joe Robinson for the Senate in the coming election.
This "Wall Street Joe'' sounds very much like Huey Long has a hand in Yenable's race this time. At least, he is Robinson's opponent who has ''contacted people in 35 counties in the last week and has made discoveries." If that doesn't sound like a typical campaign statement, what does?. . .
T. R. WYLIE
Fort Smith, Ark. College Coolies
Sirs:
Please discontinue the roster of women hauled in rickshas by college coolies [TIME, Aug. 5 ]. This short haul idea will spread and does not need endorsement. The rider gets a superior feeling. The puller gets needed cash. Industry has a new article to manufacture and in time we forget we've sunk to an Oriental level. Promoters will circus ricksha marathons and soon the fine points of the white human horse will be contrasted with those of the black one. Personally I'd back my old Chinese puller against the finest any college could turn out.
WINSTON LANGDON
Hornersville, Mo.
Message of Peace
Sirs:
... I found the article in your magazine [TIME, Aug. 5] and I must admit that the accompanying illustration seemed to me to annihilate all the efforts of the written text. I wonder whether you realized the terrific damage caused by such an illustration. Your magazine is being read all over the country and you have succeeded in convincing people that I am only a painter of horrors. As a result ... I may lose every opportunity for years to come to receive other commissions for murals or portraits. . . .
Although I was born abroad I have been an American citizen for many years and I am entitled to full support in my desperate attempts to further the cause of art and culture in the United States. I have been the first person in this country to give a University course on Living American Art.
. . . The Board of Education has just announced the decision to have the panel removed, which, of course, amounts to destruction. I do not consider this affair a personal matter and I will do everything within my power to fight for the public's right to be protected from the censorship of a few individuals who claim that "the infantile mentality of the American people" should be preserved at any cost.
My picture is a message of peace. I have painstakingly avoided every indication of political propaganda. All I wanted to convey to the people was the historical law that civilizations have to balance the destructive forces by an equal effort on the constructive and creative side. . . .
I have worked for over a year and a half on those murals. I had to cancel my art courses at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. . . . I risked my health and made considerable financial sacrifices in order to paint my message. . . .
In the last century enormous sums have been spent in covering square miles of walls in the different State capitols, libraries and other official-buildings. We cannot go on wasting the public's money on conventional, meaningless decorations and allegories. The time has come when the artist has an obligation and a right to express the spirit of our time and the most essertial problems of humanity, regardless of the fact that a few old-fashioned ignoramuses like it or not. . . .
I think it would be only fair if you would make an effort to undo the harm done to my career (when you published only the detail of destruction) by reproducing the whole panel so that everybody can see that this detail, which shows hatred and destruction, is only a small part of a big symphony preaching peace. . . .
LEO KATZ
Los Angeles, Calif.
TIME does not agree with Leo Katz that the portion of his mural reproduced in TIME, Aug. 5 will damage his artistic reputation or cultural career.--ED.
Sirs:
To Chairman Mrs. George Rounsaville a vote of gratitude for defence of Leo Katz and his colorful and vivid mural [TIME, Aug. 5].
To bigwigs of Los Angeles School System a retort for unjust criticism.
Having viewed and enjoyed this noteworthy mural myself I can truthfully say that as Artist Katz says: "without any frivolity or monkey business. . . ." the work is just what the younger generation wants and appreciates.
H. A. CROZIER Long Beach, Calif.
Fairness to Earth
Sirs:
In these appalling days of unbalanced budgets, the figure 11,046,700 looks pathetically small. However, when it is applied to the number of times that the Earth can be girdled by the 1934 macaroni crop (TIME, Aug. 12), I feel that in fairness to the Earth the figure should be scrutinized a little closely. Mr. Frank Traficanti of the Illinois Macaroni Manufacturers' Association may know his macaroni, but his optimism greatly exceeds his arithmetic.
It is 25,000 miles around the Earth, and there are 5,000 feet to the mile, in round numbers. That means that the 1934 production of macaroni was around 1,400,000,000,000,000 ft. A conservative estimate of the cross-sectional area of the average 1934 stalk of macaroni is 1/100 sq. in., I am sure you will agree. This means that a cross section of one square foot contains approximately 14,400 cross-sections of macaroni, etc. Consequently, the by now fabulous 1934 crop must have contained around 140,000,000,000 cubic feet. Spaghetti and macaroni sink in water: therefore a cubic foot of this particular staff of life weighs at least 60 lb. per cu. ft. This means that 8,000,000,000,000 lb., or 4,000,000,000 tons were produced. Since the average freight car does not carry much over 50 tons at a time, a simple calculation results in the fairish figure of 80,000,000 freight cars; 800,000 freight trains; 2,400 freight trains for each 1934 day. At the retail price of macaroni, 100 a lb., the income of this business was around $800,000,000,000. Perhaps what the country needs is a surtax on the incomes of spagheteers!
ROBLEY C. WILLIAMS
Ithaca, N. Y.
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