Fred Britten's 3 1/4 Acres

Sirs:

I observed in the Aug. 24 issue that friend Fred Britten stated as follows:

"I own three and a half acres here and you wouldn't give me a dollar and a half for it right now."

I make the offer--cash on delivery of deed, etc. Will Fred Britten accept?

KlLGORE MACFARLANE JR.

Executive Vice President

Van Strum Financial Service, Inc.,

New York City

Real American Tragedy

Sirs:

Your Aug. 17 review of An American Tragedy, the cinema recently shown in New York, is of considerable interest to many people in central New York, and to the writer in particular.

Perhaps it is not generally known that the book of the same name, written by Mr. Theodore Dreiser and purporting to furnish the plot for this cinema, was conceived from an actual murder case occurring on Big Moose Lake in the Central Adirondack section of New York State.

The Clyde Griffiths of the book and cinema was in actual life one Chester Gillette, and Roberta Alden was Miss Grace Brown. They had been keeping more or less clandestine company for some time before the episode and when they discovered their unfortunate plight a series of letters passed between them, these letters being mainly written by Miss Brown who implored Gillette to marry her.

Gillette lured Miss Brown to the Adirondacks and Big Moose Lake under a promise of marriage, took her for a boat ride, murdered her with a tennis racket, overturned the boat, swam to shore, later being apprehended, tried and convicted for first degree murder. He was electrocuted at Auburn after having confessed.

During the trial her letters were offered in evidence and attained wide publicity. Subsequent to the trial they came into my possession and have been carefully preserved. They are notable in that they quite counteract the sordid impression which one apparently gains from the cinema, and show the real tragedy of Miss Brown's unfortunate position during the last few weeks of her life. I am always willing to show these letters to anyone in whom Mr. Dreiser's book or the cinema has aroused interest.

W. RANDALL WHITMAN

Little Falls, N. Y.

Living Church

Sirs:

Substantially accurate but incomplete and consequently somewhat misleading is TIME'S account (Aug. 24, p. 26) of the financial difficulties of The Living Church. May I expand your statement a little in the interest of accuracy?

"By last May," says TIME, "The Living Church . . . had acquired a deficit of nearly $9.000." Correct--but this was a single year's deficit, not a cumulative figure. Deficits in previous years were wiped out by free grants of the publishers, Morehouse Publishing Co. So was this year's deficit, but at the cost of showing a considerable red figure on the publishers' annual fiscal report.

But not as discouraging as TIME'S report would indicate is the response of readers of The Living Church to its appeal for endowment contributions. Says TIME: "Last week's Living Church revealed the progress of the week's drive --$80 had been received." No week's campaign, but only the receipts on Monday following the Saturday appeal was represented in that $80. During the fortnight following the appeal, $1,304 was received--not a large percentage of the $250,000 sought, but a beginning. The real campaign will come after the General Convention of the Episcopal Church (Sept. 16-Oct. 3), and will be a slow, intensive process. If it is not successful in large measure, The Living Church will, perforce, fold up its tents and silently steal away.

But such a contingency is not likely to arise. Reason: exceptionally high reader interest among a highly select group of subscribers. Can TIME cite any periodical, religious or secular, that can match these figures of The Living Church? Of its individual subscribers (exclusive of agencies and single copy buyers), 27.6% voluntarily pay at "sustaining" rates of from $5 to $100 per year, instead of the regular $4 (lay) or $3.50 (clerical) rate. These sustaining subscribers contribute 41.8% of the total revenue received from individual subscriptions.

We doubt whether even TIME, with its many cover-to-cover readers, can claim as high a reader interest. . . .

CLIFFORD P. MOREHOUSE

Managing Editor

The Living Church

Milwaukee, Wis.

Portland's Dawson

Sirs:

Your Aug. 24 issue of TIME, p. 35:

You refer to K. D. Dawson as "Seattle's potent shipmaster." This is incorrect, for from the States Floor of the Porter Building, Portland, he runs the States Steamship Co. (Trans-Pacific), Pacific & Atlantic Steamship Corp. (Intercoastal) and also the Pacific European Line (Pacific U. K.).

Mr. Dawson has no official connection with Seattle's Maritime Commerce. . . .

PAUL MCCUSKER

Linnton, Ore.

Weaver

Sirs:

DEAR SIR COLON PERMIT ME TO BEAT JOHN AND RANDOLPH TO THE DRAW BY DISCLAIMING KINSHIP WITH THAT DISTINGUISHED BROTHERHOOD [TIME, Aug. 31] PERIOD NOT THAT I CARE COMMA BUT JUST IN CASE THEY SHOULD PERIOD MY BROTHER IS A TROMBONE PLAYER COMMA UNHEARD OF BUT BY NO MEANS UNHEARD STOP THANKS PERIOD

WM. R. WEAVER

The Chicagoan

Chicago, Ill.

Son Simmons' Stock

Sirs:

I noticed in the Aug. 24 issue a story under Business & Finance entitled "Back to Beds."

You say, the following tale has been told: and then later say, according to the tale, and then make a quotation of what I am supposed to have said.

I think this is very unfair as I have never been short one share or more of Simmons stock. I think that your quoting a false story is not up to the standards of TIME and I would greatly appreciate it if you would retract this tale which is absolutely untrue. . . .

ZALMON G. SIMMONS, JR.

Greenwich, Conn.

TIME gladly prints this denial of a Wall Street story so widespread and of such long standing; a story which, however, if true, would have done credit to Son Simmons' acumen.--ED.

U. S. Limbo

Sirs:

I am enclosing a photograph recently taken in my native compound, and a copy of a letter sent to the nearest American Consul which may be of interest to you:

The Letter:

American Consulate,

Johannesburg,

Transvaal, S.A.

Dear Sir:

It may be of interest to you to learn of the unique use to which our national flag is being put in certain districts within the Northern Rhodesian copper belt [sec cut].

Certain local merchants have established themselves as native traders, catering to the desires of the wage-earning native labor employed on the mines. An article of no small turnover in the trade is cheap cloth, stamped in bright colored patterns, which is sold as "limbo" to the boys returning to their villages. Upon their return the "limbo" is presented to their wives, and a boy's social position is to some degree established by the amount and beauty of the cloth his wife displays.

To the native, red, white, and blue seems to be as desirable a color combination as it was to Betsy Ross. During the past two and a half years I have seen the Stars & Stripes being worn as a loin cloth by natives near Ndola, hung upside down on the Kafue River pontoon on the road between Chambezi and Mafulisa as a Christmas decoration, and worn as a turban by a piccanin in my own compound,--the latter having been purchased, so the natives told me, from a shopkeeper in N'Changa. This flag I rescued from further degradation by taking it from the child and paying the father sixpence, the price he claimed to have paid for it. But I am afraid that I only stimulated the trade.

The native is innocent of any disrespect and ignorant of the fact that the particular pattern of stars and bars is any different from any of the other "limbo" he sees on display. I am afraid that the white merchant cannot be excused on either account.

As this practice seems to me to be rather out of order I feel obliged to bring the matter to your attention.

E. F. Fox

Field Geologist

Rhokana Corp.

N'Changa, Northern Rhodesia, Africa

Single Taxer

Sirs:

Since you have twice published Montagu Norman's prediction that without drastic changes our present economic system cannot last the year perhaps you would be willing to give a little space to the fundamental change that, in the opinion of many people, might save "capitalism" from collapse.

It is now 50 years since Henry George published his great book and, although he at one time had enough following to thoroughly alarm the privileged classes, neither at that time nor since have any "good arguments" been found against the single tax.

Yet among the people I meet, hardly anyone has any knowledge of what Progress and Poverty was all about. Older men have forgotten, younger ones have never read or heard of it.

Now that our leading bankers, industrialists and statesmen are obviously at their wits' end, would you not be rendering a public service in calling attention to your readers (an above-the-average in intelligence section of our voters) to the fact that the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, 11 Park Place, New York have prepared a condensed edition of George's great classic that can be purchased for 50$ and read in two or three hours?

Although I have been interested in George and his theories for many years, I, myself, never learned until about a year ago, I answered an advertisement in your columns, that the Single Tax had been endorsed in principle by Theo. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Justice Brandeis, John Dewey, Ex-Mayor Gaynor and a long list of college teachers of economics. . . . Perhaps it is more TiMEly to mention that Nicholas Murray Butler used Henry George's book as the subject of addresses in New York June 2 and in Paris June n of this year.

WILLIS A. SNYDER

Hudson, N. Y.

Henry George (1839-97) was born in Philadelphia, moved to California when he was 19. About ten-years later he was sent to Manhattan to open a telegraphic news bureau for the San Francisco news paper which employed him. No success, he brooded about poverty. The result was Our Land Policy, published in 1871, setting forth his solution for social malad justment. Eight years later this idea was expanded, became his famed Progress & Poverty. The time was propitious, found a public in the U. S. and abroad troubled by what Author George stated thus: "It is true that disappointment has followed disappointment, and that discovery upon discovery, and invention after invention, have neither lessened the toil of those who need respite, nor have brought plenty to the poor." The work was widely ac claimed at once, especially in Great Britain; edition followed edition. In 1905 it was estimated that 2.000.000 unabridged copies of the book had been printed, including translations into all languages.

The hypothesis upon which the George philosophy was created is that land and the profits from it belong to all living people equally. He advocated the State's ownership of land (exclusive of improvements on it). Rent would be paid in proportion to the land's value, and this rent (or single tax) would be sufficient to abolish all other taxes.

Adoption of the single tax would do away with the profits which come from land appreciation and are known as unearned increment or economic rent. An able critic of the single tax has objected that the plan takes for granted a continual increase in land values, that if the State takes the profits of increases it must also shoulder the losses from decrease.

Since 1889 a Single Tax Club has existed in Manhattan, once had for president Samuel Seabury. Pittsburgh and Scranton have approached the essence of the single lax by decreasing the tax on improve ments, increasing the tax on land until they share equally in costs. In large parts of the Canadian Northwest no improve ments on farm property are taxed. Sydney, Australia operates on a single tax basis.

In 1886 Henry George published Protection or Free Trade. That year he was nominated for Mayor of New York City, was defeated by a coalition party which mustered 90.000 votes against his 68,000. The demonstration of respect at his death was tremendous for a private citizen. He wrote fluently, often beautifully, never let the weight of his thought conquer his fondness of imagery. ''The ox of today." he said, "aspires to no more than did the ox when man first yoked him. The sea gull of the English Channel, who poises him self above the swift steamer, wants no bet ter food or lodging than the gulls who circled round as the keels of Caesar's galleys first grated on an English beach." -- ED.

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