Solutions?

Sir:

I read your Nov. 9 article on the steel strike with great interest. I have a suggestion to end long, costly strikes for all time. Simply lock the union and management in a room and let them out only when they have come up with an agreement. This method is used to elect a Pope, and has great success.

W. T. K. JOHNSON Chapel Hill, N.C.

Sir:

I think there can be only one solution to the steel strike. Those who should decide the outcome of the strike are the 500,000 striking steelworkers. A secret ballot of all the involved workers as to whether they want to continue or settle the strike might produce the most surprising results.

STEPHANIE ORFALI Zion, Ill.

Sir:

In a case like the steel strike, it is very pleasant to assume a lofty attitude and say a plague on both your houses. Unfortunately, the issues are national in scope and nobody has the right not to take a stand on them. And you cannot be against inflation and featherbedding and then fail to support the companies if their position is based on opposition to these things.

A. P. SAILER Sellersville, Pa.

"More Emphasis"

Sir:

A million thanks for the wonderful article on Northland College which appeared in your Nov. 9 issue. If I could have changed the article, I would have put more emphasis on Northland College and considerably less on its president, whose importance was overstated.

GUS TURBEVILLE President Northland College Ashland, Wis.

Bold Picture

Sir:

Re your Nov. 2 reproduction of Genre Painter John O'Brien Inman's Moonlight Skating in Central Park: there is a dazzling Inman in my collection [see cut]. A bold picture for the time--1887.

PAUL MAGRIEL New York City

"Tangled Web"

Sir:

Rigged quizzes are nothing new--they have been going on ever since Rumpelstiltskin. The only one who came to any harm was Rumpelstiltskin himself, who had posed the question to the queen: "If you find out my name, then you shall keep your child." Her messenger gave the queen the answer, and Rumpelstiltskin tore himself in two--everybody else lived happily ever after. There must be a moral in that somewhere!

ELISE SACHS New York City

Sir:

Apropos quiz shows--a timely comment from Sir Walter Scott*;

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave When first we practise to deceive!"

GRACE HUTCHINSON BALMOS Montclair, N.J.

Sir:

As a performer on ad-lib television shows all over the country for the past twelve years, I want to know if it is still permissible to wear falsies, shave one's legs, pluck one's eyebrows, wear lipstick, false eyelashes, high heels and pretty, expensive gowns, or does Congress intend that from now on the public shall see only nature in the raw? Needless to say, I want to defend Van Doren. Isn't there some more important subject left in the world for Congress to do something about, other than a defunct TV show whose only aim, no matter how it was done, was to attract an audience and entertain it, both of which it did, with no loss to anyone? People heard questions they didn't know existed and answers they never could have guessed. Who got hurt ? Only Van Doren, apparently. I never saw the show.

PAMELA MASON Beverly Hills, Calif.

Sir:

Sympathy for Charles Van Doren (and others) is misplaced and maudlin. He is old enough, and intelligent enough, to know better, yet he willingly participated in a dishonest, shabby fraud. A man so lacking in integrity doesn't belong in the teaching profession.

HELEN J. STETSON Wellfleet, Mass.

Sir:

I wish to nominate Charles Van Doren for the Academy Award for "best performance of the year."

HARVEY K. CHILDS Pittsburgh

Sir:

While we are on the subject of deceiving the public, let's mull over the practice of ghostwriting political speeches. That is far worse than fooling the public in the entertainment field.

BARBARA RIVENBURGH Waterford, Conn.

Sir:

The unsung hero of the recent Van Doren saga was not in fact the juvenile lead himself, but the lone representative [New York Republican Stevan B. Derounian] who managed to get his head above water in a room completely awash with sentiment long enough to see straight for a moment and to suggest, apparently to submerged ears, that a young man of Mr. Van Doren's intelligence and background was hardly deserving of deep thanks and high praise because he had finally decided that honesty is the best policy after all.

K. E. NICOLL Princeton, NJ.

The Senator Speaks

SIR:

THE STATEMENT ["l AM TWICE AS LIBERAL AS HUMPHREY, TWICE AS CATHOLIC AS KENNEDY AND TWICE AS SMART AS SYMINGTON"] WHICH YOU ATTRIBUTE TO ME IN YOUR NOV. 9 ISSUE IS ONE WHICH I HAVE NEVER MADE EITHER WITH A GRIN OR WITHOUT ONE. I AM DEEPLY IN EARNEST IN SUPPORTING THE CANDIDACY OF SENATOR HUBERT HUMPHREY, BUT I ADMIRE AND RESPECT SENATORS KENNEDY AND SYMINGTON AND THINK EITHER MUCH BETTER QUALIFIED FOR THE PRESIDENCY THAN ANY PROSPECTIVE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE.

EUGENE J. MCCARTHY U.S. SENATOR WASHINGTON, D.C.

Word from an "Op"

Sir:

The review of the book Edison, by Matthew Josephson, in your Nov. 2 issue is commendably excellent. As a "ham" in a small Western Union office in the 1890s here in the sphenoid tip of the Old Dominion, I coincidentally graduated from high school in 1899 and started looping about over the U.S. and Canada as a "boomer," or tramp telegrapher. When I hit Detroit, Tom Edison was in New York working the first Albany circuit at 195 Broadway. When I hit 195 Broadway, I occasionally sat in on the first Albany circuit, and although Tom had sold his quadruplex patent to Jay Gould for $30,000, the last stick of sealing wax he had been gnawing from when he quit was still reposing on the table behind the sounder.

Nevertheless, the friendly reviewer pulls the usual journalistic blooper, when he says that although deafened, Edison "could hear distinctly the click and clatter of telegraph keys." This would qualify him for supernormal hearing, because a simple telegraph set consists of key and sounder, the former to send on and the latter to receive from.

The reviewer reiterates a hoary cliche that is excruciatingly provoking to actual "ops."

CHARLES ( "BIG CHARLEY") YOUNG Big Stone Gap, Va.

How to Be a Woman

Sir:

Congratulations on your recognition [Nov. 2] of Sister Margaret, S.N.D., president of Trinity College, Washington, B.C., and the ideals of the small college in its role of educating women, the wives and mothers of tomorrow.

CATHLEEN M. RUSSELL New York City

Sir:

I can not agree with Sister Margaret's feeling that more women should go on to graduate school to be fitted for a better contribution to American life. If more women would concentrate on being good wives, and contributors to good, old-fashioned American families, they would be making their best contribution to American life.

MICHAEL RYAN Saginaw, Mich.

Size Is No Object

Sir:

It is shocking and disgusting to read [Nov. 2] that an "official" of Long Branch Teachers College in Toronto discriminated against a human being because of his size.

If Canada does not need him, let Mr. Babinetz come to Colorado, where we need good teachers and we do not discriminate against people's sizes. My measurements: 6 ft. 1 in., 210 Ibs., 40-28-42. I do command authority.

EDNA PAULINE WALLACE Counselor and Teacher for Mentally Retarded Boys Wheatridge, Colo.

Re-Count

Sir:

Are you suggesting that Senator John Kennedy will need 761 votes to win the presidential nomination but that Senator Lyndon Johnson will need only 756 [Oct. 26]? Does this result from discrimination or a handicapping system?

LOUIS BALDWIN Albuquerque

P: Neither; TIME just added wrong.--ED.

Soft Underbelly

Sir:

In your Nov. 2 edition you describe the deceased Ukrainian leader Stefan Bandera as dedicated to the "lost cause" of Ukrainian independence. May I respectfully point out that such a cause cannot be considered lost while there remain men--and there are many --willing to follow his example in the struggle for a free and independent Ukrainian nation.

P. C. KUPA Sarnia, Ont.

Sir:

We are glad that a man who devoted his life to fighting Communism, in order to liberate Ukraine, was commemorated by your magazine.

EUGENE PALKA President Ukrainian-American Student Association Cleveland

*Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field.

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