Prejudiced, Cynical
Sirs:
Your recent summary of Dr. Charles Clayton Morrison's leading editorial on Prohibition (in the Christian Century, ''only Dry weekly") I read with interest (TIME, Dec. 1). I also noted marginal comment, a counter sword play, wherein statement was made that TIME is neutral on Prohibition as on all other national issues. You then openly retaliated. While assigning sincerity to the man, you took occasion to say that he also cherished a selfish motive in writing as he did: namely, to swell the coffers of the Christian Century. In that respect he is no more selfish than the Literary Digest, the Pathfinder, or many a damp American daily. Are they not using Prohibition as an advertising scheme to increase circulation? Yet I have never seen your paper take insinuating cracks at them.
All of which leads me to remark that in my four years of subscription to TIME, I have noted again and again that you insist on interpreting news. My judgment is that your subscribers belong to a class of fairly intelligent people, as competent to interpret facts as you. Personally, I wish you might stay what you claimed to be when I first received your advertising matter: a newsmagazine.sb I should prefer that you omit the colorings of your own prejudices.
If you accurately and fully reflect public sentiment, after following you four years, I am persuaded that the country is Wet. If your job is not fully and accurately done, then you are damp: for Wet sentiment in your magazine overtops the Dry.
Well water tastes of all the salts and soils through which it passes on the way to the surface. So your reported news, from cover to cover, tastes of drink. Allowing for my personal prejudice for Prohibition, and allowing too for the fact that a minister never sees much of which the church frowns upon, ] cannot help feeling that. At least, when I have tried to interest friends in TIME, they say it is too cynical, too Wet for them.
E. MARCELLUS NESBITT
Columbus, Ohio
To one of its editors TIME recently assigned the special task of collecting as much "Dry" news as possible. Reason: to guard against the alleged "bias" of the great Metropolitan papers which TIME minutely scans.--ED.
Rockne's Religion
Sirs:
. . . Our country store gossips have it that Rockne, noted coach of a noted Catholic institution of learning, is a Presbyterian.
Heated arguments on this subject can only be cooled off by the accepted authority of TIME. GERALD V. BURKE
Sodus Packing Co.
Sodus, N. Y.
Four years ago Notre Dame's Rockne, born a Presbyterian, announced his conversion to Catholicism. He regularly attends the College Chapel at Notre Dame. --ED.
Miscellany
Sirs:
I have been a reader of TIME for over two years now and enjoy it immensely, but there is one thing I do not like about it. This is your Miscellany column. It seems to me that every item in it tells of some gruesome way of somebody being killed or committing suicide. Why don't you print something else in this column?
ROBERT SUXDHEIM
Forthwith let the Miscellany Department reduce its percentage of grue.--ED.
Maxims
Sirs:
Would it be presumptuous to point out a very little error in the article about Clare Eames (TIME, Nov. 17)?
I believe you will find that the inventor of the Maxim Silencer was Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim, and not Hiram Percy Maxim as you have it. His dates, 1840-1916.
MRS. E. KENT KANE
Bradford, Pa.
Subscriber Kane has confused father & son. Sir Hiram-Stevens Maxim invented the automatic rifle. Son Hiram Percy (no Sir) invented the Sifencer.--ED.
Third Degree Reporter
Sirs:
Three cheers for Emanuel H. Lavine and his book The Third Degree (TIME, Nov. 3). He surely knows just what he is talking about and the New York Police Commissioner Mulrooney can scarcely hope to honestly deny its contents.
The review of this book was excellent, but I think that Mr. Lavine's picture ought to grace your pages so that those of us out here in the wilderness might see just how he looks.
DR. J. F. VANNER
Chicago, Ill.
Sirs:
. . .Thanks to your review I purchased and read the book and to my mind it is just about THE best thing out. It seems to me that Mr. Lavine justly deserves a corner in your magazine for his picture. I for one would like to see what he looks like.
FRANK H. VAN WAGONER
University of Utah Salt Lake City, Utah.
Emanuel H. Lavine (see cut, p. 4) was born in New York City, Dec. 27, 1886. Having studied medicine, he started work in Bellevue Hospital, but abandoned that career for reporting. His first newspaper job was with the New York Evening Journal (Hearst). Year later he changed to the American (Hearst). There he had a general assignment, roving from 14th St. to 96th St. He covered the murder of Gambler Herman Rosenthal (1912), the Black Tom explosion (1916), the Whittemore gang murders (19-26), numerous
Chinatown Tong feuds and peace-conferences. Like many a newsgatherer, he often has been pressed into service as an emergency fireman, surgeon, bodyguard. He is married, has had one daughter, who died.
Lately Reporter Lavine has been night man attached to police headquarters for the American. He wrote The Third Degree last May, now points with pride to its indication of the "vice-rackets" and subornation of magistrates currently exposed in New York City. Since the book was published, he has been consulted by President Hoover's Law Enforcement Commission, has given lectures before several civic bodies on the prevalence and practice of third-degree methods by the police of U. S. cities.
Recent news stories have illustrated the evils of third degree. On Nov. 26 Joseph Barbado, who had been sent to the death house at Sing Sing prison last December on a third degree confession of murder, was released almost at the eleventh hour. --En. D. A. C.'s Beasley
Sirs:
Reading your most excellent publication from cover to cover each week, I have been much surprised that you have failed to note and report the recent change of presidents of the Detroit Aircraft Corp., Detroit, Mich., probably one of the largest of its kind in the U. S.
The presidency was assumed by Peter R. (Continued on p. 38)
(Continued from p. 4)
Beasley, of the Beasley-Eastman Laboratories, Detroit, manufacturers of diathermy apparatus, and president of the Sanitarium Equipment Co., Battle Creek, Mich., the world's largest manufacturers of physical therapy apparatus.
Mr. Beasley, an able executive with a keen foresight into the ills and needs of an industry will ultimately put on a sound basis a big and potent factor in the airplane industry, and I believe will be one of the first to put on a rational plane, the question of private ownership of planes for pleasure flying and private business. In addition to all this, Mr. Beasley himself is decidedly air-minded, and capable of handling a ship himself.
W. R. BURT
Battle Creek, Mich.
Cheap Light
Sirs:
In a recent paragraph titled "Cheap Light" (TIME, Dec. 1) you, unwittingly of course, committed an injustice against our product: Lyter-life--a synthetic, emulsified fuel for lighters. You assert, apropos of a German-made product, that similar fuels "have not been wholly successful in the U. S." This statement is, however, definitely belied by our ascending sales curve on Lyterlife. . . .
Unlike the German product, Lyterlife is non-liquid in the tube and remains non-liquid even after being fed into the lighter which is accomplished via the "force-feed" system. This forced feeding thoroughly impregnates the cotton in the fuel chamber of the lighter, minimizes evaporation, and yet permits Lyterlife to feed into the wick as readily as a liquid. . . .
S. J. LEVIN
Art Metal Works, Inc. Newark, N. J.
Where More?
Sirs:
"From Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strand"--the Hymnal's measure of distance; not so TIME'S who adds many more miles to its scope; also the air and the depths of the earth.
I'm a "go thru" reader of TIME and after a mind-trip thru your Dec. 8 issue in which I had touched the farthermost parts of the earth--all in my easy chair, I just wondered how far my eyes had traveled.
Approximately 350 yds. of type--not including the side trips to the ads which I always take. I ask you where can you get more mileage with so little wear on the tires?
I detest those statistician hounds who put things end to end and stretch them across the country, so don't publish this if it's going to start the pack off in full cry.
H. W. JOYCE
La Grange, Ill.
Let no statistical hounds give tongue. --Bo.
May we ALL
Sirs:
In your issue of Nov. 24, p. 63 you state the manner in which you would have reported the eventful Jefferson Birthday Dinner of April 13, 1830.
Being a reader and great admirer of your publication and appreciating the accuracy that you are noted for I feel constrained at this time to call attention to certain errors in this advertisement.
The name of the Vice-President at that time was not John Clay Calhoun, as reported by you, but John Caldwell Calhoun.
Calhoun's answer to the President's toast as reported by you follows: "The Union":--"Next to our Liberty most dear! May we remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States and distributing equally the benefits and burthen of the Union!"
Calhoun's answer to the President's toast according to Wm. M. Meigs the recognized authority on the life of John Caldwell Calhoun follows: The Union--next to our Liberty most dear. May we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States and distributing equally the benefit and the burthen of the Union.
TEMPLE CALHOUN
San Antonio, Texas.
-Error: not a but the Newsmagazine--ED.
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