Laughlin on the Job

Sirs:

On p. 22 of your issue of Sept. 28, under the heading Japan-China, the first paragraph contains this sentence: "When Alfonso XIII was driven from his throne, U. S. Ambassador Irwin Boyle Laughlin was out of town.''

I cannot understand how your newsgatherers came to give you such a statement, for it is without foundation in fact. I was at my post uninterruptedly fulfilling my official functions for several months before and after the change of government, and not only was I not absent from the city of Madrid during the entire time of the revolutionary crisis but I .did not even leave the Embassy premises except on official business for many days. . . .

IRWIN LAUGHLIN

Embassy of the United States of America Madrid, Spain

To Ambassador Laughlin, deepest apologies.--ED.

Williams Houseparties

Sirs:

In your issue of Oct. 19, p. 30, there was an item in regard to President Garfield of Williams College having persuaded the fraternities to abandon their fall houseparties.

Dr. Garfield has frowned on houseparties for years and I'm sorry he has accomplished his objective under the pretense of assisting parental pocketbooks.

This only makes the situation worse for the musicians, florists, dressmakers, local merchants and others who might have profited therefrom. And those boys who cannot afford to invite guests are not obligated to do so anyway.

. EDWARD E. CONNOR

Williams, 1921 Providence, R. I.

Up Cudgels

Sirs:

I noted with interest your magnificent advertisement in the New York Herald Tribune purporting that TIME was the first choice magazine among U. S. Bankers and their wives, Railroad Executives and their wives, etc. as well as BEST customers of BEST STORES (surely not Best & Co.) ad infinitum. It behooves me to take up the cudgels for the thousands of subscribers (myself included) that read TIME who do not come within the descriptive category of your advertisement but who nevertheless find the magazine interesting, unique in style and not "over their heads."

ESTELLE ROSS (My vocation--Secretary)

Brooklyn, N. Y.

To all readers besides bankers, rail executives, best customers and their wives, TIME'S thanks for their support and friendship. Their professional categories will be investigated, analyzed, reported on from time to time.--ED.

Edisoniana

Sirs:

No mention has been made in the many news items concerning the late Mr. Edison of an unusual method he had of conversing when in a public place. I was in Washington in September 1917. Mr. Edison, then adviser to the Navy Department, was resident at the old Shoreham Hotel, since razed. No Prohibitionist then, he and his secretary appeared nightly in the basement Lafayette Grill for a rarebit and two bottles of beer (each). Due to Mr. Edison's deafness it was quite impossible for his secretary to speak with him without the conversation being heard by all rarebiteers. Therefore, his secretary tapped with his fingers on Edison's arm, just above the wrist, holding a finger down longer, I presume to differentiate between the dash and the dot. Mr. Edison responded by word of mouth, or chuckled, whichever the code conversation called for. Thus did the secretary carry on unostentatiously an animated conversation with his chief without ever opening his mouth. It could not be observed unless one sat at the next table. . . .

ROBERT SEVEY

Chicago, Ill.

Ringlingiana

Sirs:

Old residents of Baraboo, Wis. question the statement in TIME, Oct. 12, p. 51, to the effect that the name of America's foremost circus family became Ringling after a newspaper misprint which was never corrected. It is true that "Rungeling" was at one time the family name, but that was in the old country during the period in the 19th Century when France controlled Alsace, the Ringling native land. The change was made before emigration when a box of old records revealed the fact that Ringling was the original family name.

Ringling anecdotes are still current in this city from which the circus first set out, although the circus headquarters were removed from here almost 20 years ago. Stories are told of Henry Ringling the 200-lb. slack wire performer and Charles, the "strong man," who balanced a plow on his chin.

An early trip took the brothers and their small troupe to Portage 17 miles away. The journey was made on foot. However, it was discovered on their arrival that a license fee of $50 was required. As their limited resources would not permit such an expenditure the troupe trudged on ten miles to Pardeeville where the wonders of the show were displayed.

Later during the panic of 1893, a run was threatened on one of the Baraboo banks. The Ringlings, now well established, helped avert it by shipping trunks of cash from their gate receipts in order that payments to frightened depositors might be made.

C. C. PINKERTON

Baraboo, Wis.

Air Trust Flayed

Sirs:

Flying from San Antonio to Tulsa in a Lockheed-Orion of the Bowen Airlines last week, I read with interest your TiMEly story concerning the financial success of the unsubsidized Ludington Airline which seems to be bringing such grief to both Postmaster General Brown and the officials of Eastern Air Transport (TIME, Sept. 28).

... I want to tell the businessmen and women of this country a little story that will shock some of the most hardened.

Less than two years ago the popular Wedell-Williams Air Service of New Orleans offered the country its speediest interstate airline, featuring the use of Pratt-&-Whitney powered Lockheed-Vega six-place monoplanes. These planes cruised at 150 m. p. h. Six months subsequent to the inauguration of the Wedell-Williams line between New Orleans and Fort Worth the Bowen Airlines inaugurated a new service featuring fast Lockheed-Vega planes linking Houston and San Antonio with Tulsa and Oklahoma City. A few weeks later the new Braniff Airline was formed, offering Lockheed-Vega planes in a service linking Oklahoma City with Chicago, Kansas City and St. Louis. Thus we find practically every important city from the Great Lakes to the gulf joined together with Lockheed airline equipment.

When the Lockheed Aircraft Corp. introduced its famed new low-wing Orion, cruising at 175 m. p. h., Bowen Airlines purchased two planes for use on its run. Later, Pittsburgh Airways, followed suit, as did Ludington Airlines.

Today, some 20 months subsequent to the passage of the Watres Air Mail Law, framed to benefit all passenger airline operators able to meet the legal requirements, it is a significant and disgraceful fact that not a single passenger carrier not identified with the aviation trust has been able to obtain a mail subsidy.

These independent passenger carriers are offering the public the speediest and newest planes known to the aviation industry. They are offering this speedy equipment on more frequent and more direct daily schedules than any mail contractor whose planes cannot average in excess of 120 m. p. h. cruising speed. And in the face of this combination of facts, the petitions of every passenger operator for mail contracts have been ignored by the Post Office Department at Washington without exception and without explanation!

This is a grave reflection upon the Republican administration and it is to be hoped that the next Congress will cause an ample and militant investigation to be made of this outrage. Personally, I shall refuse to patronize the air mail until this situation is corrected.

J. D. JOHNSON

Dallas, Texas

Ewes for Chickens

Sirs:

As an illustration of the parlous situation the stock industry now finds itself in in the Far West I enclose a clipping from the Oct. 10 issue of the Great Falls Daily Tribune. For your information a reasonably fat ewe dresses out at least 40 lb., and a fat chicken is worth about six bits . Three years ago breeding ewes were worth from $10 to $13 each and hard to get.

H. C. HALL

Great Falls, Mont.

The clipping:

200 BREEDING ewes to trade for chickens, any number; 2 ewes for 3 chickens, Herman McCain, Great Falls.

Cotton & Commonsense

Sirs:

In answer to Lawyer David Stock (TIME, Oct. 12) would say that Huey P. Long's no-planting law of cotton would be entirely legal from the standpoint of pest control, i.e. cotton boll weevil (Anthonomus grandis) or cotton-louse (Aphis gossypii) which are truthfully making inroads on one of the South's basic industries.

As a cotton planter and a resident of the South conversant with its conditions I want to assure Lawyer Stock that the old law of "Survival of the fittest" will do more than any act of legislature to reduce cotton production. I also believe that most thinking people regard such legislative action as a reflection upon the intelligence of people engaged in the labor of raising cotton, who must be protected by law to keep from breaking their financial neck, if still intact another year.

JACK ANDERSON

Cotton & Commonsense Transylvania, La.

Big-Time Trainer

Sirs:

"All Things Come In Time. . . ." There was a time when time and again one would peruse one's TIME, there fail to notice mention of "little St. Mary's (of California)"College Football Team, the "Galloping Gaels," in TIME'S sports news. Example: (failure to mention) St. Mary's, 13 v. the mighty University of Southern California, 6, at Los Angeles Olympic Stadium, last Sept. 26. But now the time has arrived, when TIME, the Weekly Newsmagazine, sits up and takes a notice of the efforts of these "Gaels" as in the TIME issue of Oct. 12, when reporting St. Mary's victory, 14 to 0, over the nearly as potent University of California, at Berkeley Memorial Stadium, last Oct. 3; a very timely notice. This time next year TIME no doubt will recognize, too, that "little St. Mary's (of California)" is not the same St. Mary's as a good many other colleges of the same name in many other parts of the country. Thus TIME makes up for lost time. It is time for St. Mary's (of California) fans to be thankful; also to praise the alertness of ever wide-awake TIME, where a notice (though only a few lines) means time out among a painstaking staff of newsgatherers to enable them to furnish an exacting public with precise news data.

0. HICHENS GLIMSTEAD Medical Gymnast

Athletic Trainer, St. Mary's College of California. Formerly in the same capacity at Big-Time Schools such as the University of Illinois, Notre Dame, etc. St. Mary's College, Calif.

Lie to Dr. Wilson

Sirs:

I notice in your Oct. 19 issue, a story from Dr. Clarence True Wilson, in regard to the American Legion convention at Detroit.

Being a Methodist myself, in fact a Steward in a Methodist church here in Dallas, I feel that I am qualified to answer Dr. Wilson.

I was in Detroit at the American Legion convention, as a delegate from Texas, and when Dr. Wilson calls the Legionnaires at Detroit a bunch of drunkards, he lies.

While passing through Kansas City I picked up a Kansas City Journal and noticed that he called them a bunch of scoundrels--he lies again.

As stated above, I was at the Detroit convention and did not see half a dozen men under the influence of liquor ....

COL. W. E. ("BILL") EASTERWOOD, JR.

Dallas, Texas

Four L's

Sirs:

In the Oct. 19 issue of your magazine on p. 12 in an article dealing with William Green the president of the A. F. of L. is a reference to John Llewelyn Lewis, only in your case the middle name is spelt (Llewellyn) with four Vs instead of three. I fail to understand why so many of that name in the U. S. fail to spell it in a correct manner. You seldom or ever see Welsh papers or Welsh-speaking Welshmen spelling that name with four I's. When you come across folks who spell it thus--Llewellyn --and ask them after whom it is named they invariably say one of the last independent princes of Wales, but his name was Llewelyn. Ninety per cent of those who hold that name and spell it Llewellyn could not pronounce that in a correct manner even if they were offered the wealth of Ford for a correct pronunciation.

JOHN MORGAN

Gary, Ind.

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