Speed & Color

Sirs:

For the past several months I have noticed that TIME'S front-cover pictures have been in color--continuously, week after week. . . . Color pictures seem so much more alive than flat black-&-white subjects.

If I remember correctly, your former policy was to print a color picture about every fourth week. . . .

Since your new color-picture policy, I note no lack of "newsworthiness" in your weekly subjects so I should like to ask if a new improved color process has made for speedier use of color plates. . . .

OLIVER WILEY Troy, Ala.

With the Oct. 18 issue, TIME began running weekly four-color covers as an experiment, has since adopted them as a continuing policy. No new color process, but a speeding up of engraving and printing schedules has made this possible. The deadline for color photographs or paintings to reach TIME'S engravers in Chicago is two weeks and four days before publication, which is probably the fastest four-color magazine cover schedule in the world.--ED.

Appreciative Whites

Sirs:

Your mention of John Claybrook and comments on his accomplishments in TIME, Jan. 17 is appreciated by his white neighbors. There is no man, white or black, in Crittenden County, across the river from Memphis, more highly thought of than John. What he has done any other Negro sharecropper can do if he has the energy and the ability. Few have either of these. ... In his case, as in most cases, the white neighbors down here are always willing to help a good Negro get ahead. . . .

J. T. MORGAN Memphis, Tenn.

For further news about the relations between Southern blacks and whites see p. 8.--ED.

Overtones & Innuendoes

Sirs:

What a lot of fun TIME'S critics would miss if artists did not entertain them with their serious work. With what penetrating wit these specialists observe that Martha Graham's Frontier (TIME, Jan. 10) is, after all, but a fence-act; that modern dance numbers when repeated become hash; that drums that accompany the modern dance are thumped and oboes tootle.

Gesture has ever been more expressive than words, has ever been able to present an idea with more of its overtones & innuendoes. May the modern dance sometime turn its biting satire upon obtuse TIME critics and their kind. . . .

HARRIET MASON Dobbs Ferry, N. Y.

Polite General Franco

Sirs:

TIME quotes Mrs. Edithe Dahl (Jan. 17) as claiming to have received a letter from General Franco in which he used the words, "Your obedient servant kisses your foot." Then TIME adds: "To General Franco, who is a married man, this may have proved embarrassing." Error. It is an ancient and courtly Spanish custom to terminate a formal letter to a lady thus:

"Su S. S., Q. B. S. P.," which is a conventional abbreviation for "Your obedient servant who kisses your feet." It is rarely written out. The general was being coldly and stiffly polite, and his wife could not have taken the slightest offense.

SCOTT MCREYNOLDS Los Angeles, Calif.

The termination Su seguro servidor que besa sus pies is currently used only in Insurgent Spain.--ED.

Hungry

Sirs:

In your issue of Jan. 10 you give the American Student Union a lot more consideration than it deserves. ... I assure you, on U. S. campuses people who belong to the American Student Union are not taken particularly seriously. It is not that they are mostly second-generation Europeans; it is not that they talk too loudly and wear badly-fitted clothes; it is just that they are so damned publicity hungry.

IAMES J. WHITCOMBE New Haven, Conn.

Cheapskates at Atlantic City

Sirs:

. . . We should be very much interested to learn the source of information used by you in the Jan. 10 issue of TIME, for we feel that there is a grave error somewhere. You said that Mr. C. D. White, our Mayor, once remarked that only "cheapskates" come to Atlantic City. Our Mayor is entirely too much of a gentleman to refer to any convention as a group of "cheapskates," and most certainly no person in this city in his right mind would so deliberately offend any organization.

We particularly regret that this occurred in connection with so fine a group of thinking people as was represented by the convention referred to. . . .

T. L. HUSSELTON Executive Manager Atlantic City Chamber of Commerce Atlantic City, N. J.

Let Reader Husselton heed what he reads, Mayor White did not call members of the Allied Social Science Association names. TIME reported that he said the type of visitor attracted by Atlantic City's former press bureau was a "cheapskate.''--ED.

Accurate De Mille

Sirs:

In National Affairs, Jan. 17: "... The New Deal has made the seventh President's birthday a national political fiesta." And: "Robert Houghwout Jackson ... in the prelude to his namesake's birthday. . . ."

Then, in Cinema: "The Buccaneer (Paramount). On Jan. 8, 1815, 'Old Hickory' Jackson and his ragged army . . . turned back the British at New Orleans in an extra-inning battle of the War of 1812."

All good Democrats know their Party celebrates the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans and not Jackson's birthday, which is March 15. ...

Your cinema man while investigating Mr. De Mille's historical accuracy could have been of assistance to your National Affairs editors, whose research TIME is evidently occupied with investigations of people's middle names.

J. C. LOONEY Chairman Democratic Executive Committee

Hidalgo County, Tex.

To TIME'S National Affairs editors and researchers, a shocked reproof for being less accurate than Mr. Cecil B. De Mille.--ED.

Fan Sirs:

In the theatre business, box office, as you no doubt know, is largely determined by names and exploitation. Therefore when quite a few of my patrons mention that they saw the reviews in TIME and have been influenced in coming to see certain pictures which lacked both star names and noise-- I, and there are probably other exhibitors who have benefited in the same way, am definitely grateful to you and to your movie critic, whose writings are not colored by blurbs but are sincere and impartial and accepted as that by the movie-going public.

H. J. SHAPIRO Manager Anthony Wayne Theatre Wayne, Pa.

Retired

Sirs:

. . . I find your comment on my book Labor Spy [TIME, Jan. 3] the best present in the Christmas sock. . . .

TIME, here's a question. . . . Suppose a man builds a factory and equips it with a lot of modern machinery. Say a million for the plant and another million for the equipment. Then he digs up a lot of orders and hires a force of 500 men and puts them to work making cheese or rolling pins or whatever. . . . Well, what kind of men does he get? Experts on statistics will tell you that a certain percentage are absolutely honest and want to work hard, another per cent will steal anything they can get away with, another group are malcontents, while another section are like Rush Holt, "natural-born hell-raisers." The first thing our owner knows, there is "labor trouble" in the plant and he wonders why. His foremen don't know and his employment experts don't know. So far, the only means discovered by industry is to have one of my ilk--a Labor Spy--who will circulate among the men and find out just exactly what is on their minds and why. I'm not referring to labor unions; unions are only one phase of the labor espionage business and, until the past five years, a very minor part of it.

The owner of the plant I speak of has fire insurance, tornado insurance, and life insurance on the lives of the principal officials. His largest cash outlay (in a good many plants) is for labor. Is he justified in hiring one of us to make certain that his labor machine doesn't go sour? I'll not pretend to answer. I'm retired and don't give a damn. . .

GT-99 New York City

Chamberlain's Leap

Sirs:

TIME'S editors, bemused by gout, evidently have never leapt walls. In your issue of Jan. 17 you show a picture of Britain's gaitered Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain "leaping" a stone wall. Look more closely. There is a ladder in the right-hand corner. Mr. Chamberlain has climbed up the ladder and is now gingerly stepping off. He is going to land stiff-legged at that. He will probably wryly agree that a leap should be goaty, not gouty.

HAROLD BERMAN New York City

Satisfying News

Sirs:

It certainly was a satisfaction to pick up the current copy of TIME [Jan. 10] and get the real story of that chap who went haywire out on the coast on a borrowed yacht.

To learn that Jack Morgan was only one of his assumed names is what I call real news. . . .

JOHN C. MORGAN President Morgan Advertising Co. Mansfield, Ohio

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