Hawaii's Symphony
Sirs:
Surprised you may be to know that the Paradise of the Pacific, "restless purgatory of murder and race hatred" (TIME, Jan. 18), supports a symphony orchestra of 62 pieces directed by Australian Fritz Hart, F.R.C.M., and with a personnel made up of
7 Filipinos
2 Japanese
1 Hawaiian
2 Chinese
2 Portuguese
1 Purto Rican
2 Italians
45 Anglo Saxons
Today the first concert of the 1932 season was smoothly rendered, enthusiastically received in Honolulu's big Princess Theatre (capacity 1,554). Even more cosmopolitan than the personnel of the orchestra was the make-up of the audience. Prices for the concert ranged from $1 to $2.50, and every seat was occupied.
Mainlanders, saturated with grossly exaggerated press reports of racial animosity in Hawaii, will be surprised to learn that no racial riots were in evidence in the theatre during the rendering of the program! Nor was this due to the presence, as a violinist in the orchestra, of able Charles F. Weeber, newly appointed Chief of Police for Honolulu.
Enclosed please find concert program.
TED TRENT
Honolulu, Hawaii
Certainly no music on the Honolulu symphony's opening program would inspire riot. Mendelssohn's pleasant, pictorial Fingal's Cave began the concert, Beethoven's great Fifth gave it significance.--ED.
In Pineville
Sirs:
DEMAND FULL RETRACTION YOUR LIBELOUS STATEMENT FEBRUARY
TWENTY SECOND MY CONNECTION WALDO FRANK AFFAIR EVERY WORD CONTEMPTIBLE LIE PLEASE ADVISE.
HERNDON EVANS
Pineville, Ky.
So controversial have been reports from Pineville, where Writer Waldo Frank & party tried to distribute food to hungry striking miners, that the Associated Press, last week, answered complaints of bias on the part of its local representative thus: "Mr. Evans is ... not a staff correspondent of The Associated Press and The Associated Press is not responsible for his personal conduct." No contemptible liar, TIME erred in failing to distinguish between the group of assailants, including Herndon Evans, who rode Waldo Frank out of Kentucky and brutally attacked him and Lawyer Allen Taub, and those members of the group who actually did the manhandling. Allen Taub and another member of the writers' group have testified before a Senate committee that when the lights came on again after Lawyer Taub had been beaten in the dark, Herndon Evans, also editor of the weekly Pineville Sun and local Red Cross head, walked up to bloody-faced Allen Taub and said: "Well, Taub, give us a speech on the Constitution now."--ED.
Slayer Allen Acquitted
Sirs:
The killing of Francis Donaldson III by Edward Allen was considered newsworthy by TIME. Is not Allen's acquittal part of the contemporary scene or is the omission of it in the Feb. 15 issue an oversight?
R. N. VAN GILDER
New Haven, Conn.
Edward Allen, lean young gentleman rider, killed Francis A. ("Skinny") Donaldson III, pugnacious amateur boxer, with a shotgun. It was revealed before and during his trial, three weeks ago, that Donaldson had invaded the Allen apartment, refusing to leave, and had knocked young Allen down in a quarrel growing out of Donaldson's relations with Edward Allen's 18-year-old sister Rose. Donaldson and Rose Allen had mutually admitted a love affair. At the trial young Allen, whose family is now poor but still influential, had the legal services of Philadelphia's crack criminal lawyer, John R. K. Scott, and onetime State Senator, Fletcher Wilbur Stites. TIME, aware that few influential young killers are jailed, fewer still if they are backed by the '"unwritten law"' and shrewd lawyers, was not surprised at Edward Allen's acquittal, did not record his theatrical but perfunctory trial. Last week Rose Allen took a job as salesgirl in a West Philadelphia dress shop.--ED.
News Value
Sirs:
On Jan. 9, 1932, the National Grange, the American Farm Bureau Federation, and the Farmer's Union announced by radio that they had joined in advocating the passage by Congress of a six-point program, including the stabilization of the dollar.
To date I have seen no mention of this in TIME. Must one of the following questions be answered in the affirmative? Was TIME napping? Does TIME consider the doings of organized agriculture of no news value? Or does TIME, like most magazines, mortally fear its advertisers?
R. E. MOODY
Rushville, N. Y.
Let Subscriber Moody think again.
If TIME were to record all the advocating of all the advocating organizations in the world's most advocating nation, neither Subscriber Moody nor his friends
WOUld read it. As for the National Grange, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Farmer's Union, TIME rates as newsworthy their strictly agricultural policies,*but not their highly inexpert views on currency.--ED.
Boise, Cripple Creek, Butte, Sirs:
Item for TIME'S Natural History Series:
My friend, Old Bob, Arizona prospector, showed me his Snake Trap, intended to discourage the pesky rattlers' egg addiction.
Apparatus: A snake-size hole down at the back of his ramshackle henhouse.
Bait: Two eggs, one just outside and one just inside the hole.
Modus operandi: Snake swallows outside egg, squeezes part way through hole and appropriates inside egg; finding himself unable either to advance or retreat he threshes around arousing inmates; chickens shatter the desert night with strident squawks; Old Bob dashes forth and decapitates snake.
Fair enough, but he had to add that the eggs, partly snake-digested, only required one minute's boiling for his ensuing breakfast.
I am a two-TIMER. My subscription produces the desired results at the office but I am usually in the field and am glad to report increasing newsstand availability in Boise, Cripple Creek, Butte or Nogales.
One gripe--please abbreviate Colorado correctly. Col. is never used by Coloradans, is unauthorized (see U. S. Postal Guide), and is easily confused with Cal., which Heaven forbid.
ROBERT H. SAYRE Denver, Colo.
No chance of TIME readers confusing Colorado with California (abbreviated Calif.), but "Colo." it shall hereafter be. --ED.
Youngest "Old Man"
Sirs:
I have been Mr. Robert Long's physician for many years and was therefore much interested in your account of Mr. Long [Founder-President of "biggest-in-the-world" Long-Bell Lumber Corp.].
I am enclosing a photograph of "the huge old house" in Kansas City in which Mr. Long lives. This home is unquestionably one of the finest, in every respect, in this part of the country and there are very few to equal it anywhere. I mention this because your comment on "a huge old house" conveys rather the wrong impression of a man who is most exacting about his home life, which is modest but most splendid./-
Mr. Long is 81 years of age instead of 87. He is one of the youngest "old men" I have ever known, walks perfectly erect, is active, and he is I think without question recognized as the keenest mind in a very fine organization. Outside of his brilliance of intellect, the most outstanding characteristic of the man is his immense courage and equanimity. Your appellation "Old Robert" intrigues me--it would not be recognized here, least of all by Mr. Long, who doesn't think he is old, and certainly doesn't act it. Mr. Long has unusual dignity, even with cordial familiarity to those of all stations with whom he comes in contact, but nobody tried "Old Robert" before.
On the whole, however, I want to compliment you on the picture you painted of a most unusual man--a man who in former days would have built empire.
A. SOPHIAN
Kansas City, Mo.
TIME felicitates the youngest "Old Robert" in history.--ED.
The Widow Chamberlain
Sirs:
Your exceedingly interesting account (TIME, Feb. 15, p. 21) of a recent happening in the entitled "Old Joe's Boy," seems to me misleading at one point, although there is no actual misstatement. You speak of the present Mrs. William Hartley Carnegie, as--"a little old U. S.-born lady," who was the widow of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain ("Old Joe"), and stepmother of Mr. Chamberlain's children. The impression given is, I think, that the former Mrs. Joseph Chamberlain is greatly the senior of her distinguished stepsons. Miss Mary Endicott was 23 years of age at the time of her marriage to Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, then a man of 50, and she is almost exactly the age of her eldest stepson, Sir Austen Chamberlain, and she is not "little," being tall and slender.
ELIZABETH NICHOLS CASE
Hartford, Conn.
The onetime Widow Chamberlain is 67; Stepson Sir Austen, 68; Stepson Neville, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 62.--ED.
Parachuted Seats
Sirs:
Congratulations on a TIMEly, clever, and accurate report, "Parachutes for Passengers?p. 40, Feb. 15, issue. . . .
Without detracting in any way from the honors or activities of Major Edward L. Hoffman, but in fairness to conscientious effort and merit where it is due, I want to point out that the early development work on the 'chute with which "Les" Irvin made his famous jump at McCook Field was done by Floyd Smith, member of the "Early Birds," pilot in 1912, test pilot for Glenn Martin in 1914, barnstormer, aeronaut-scientist. He turned his attention to parachutes when the wing of a plane he was testing for Martin broke off 1,200 ft. in the air. Sept. 28, 1918, General William A. Mitchell cabled from France to have Floyd Smith put to work on parachute development. . . . With Guy Ball, Floyd Smith worked on his parachute idea through October, November, first drop-test being made Dec. 4, 1918. . . . Early in 1919 activities at McCook were taken over by the Air Service Engineering Division and the parachute section came under the supervision then of Major Hoffman, chief officer of the equipment section. Major Hoffman aided and plugged conscientiously for parachute development, contributed little of scientific value. Smith's name has been lost in aviation consciousness because he early sold rights under his patents to manufacture to Irving Air Chute Co., the public since assuming that the parachute was the design mainly of Irvin, the jumper, which was error. . . .
Floyd Smith is still the best parachute brains in this hemisphere, probably in the world; probably knows more about parachute performance and effectiveness than all other parachute men combined (no exaggeration), thinks ten, perhaps 20, years ahead; predicts time will come when each individual seat in passenger planes will be parachute-equipped under the control of the pilot who, in an emergency, by merely pulling a lever can discharge each passenger and automatically open his parachute, whereupon passenger will float comfortably to earth still in his or her airplane chair. Three years ago, near Trenton, Smith actually reconstructed the cabin of a plane, dropped several persons at various times with complete success. . . .
LLOYD S. GRAHAM
Buffalo, N. Y.
*For example, TIME reported the American Farm Bureau Federation's determination to resume its fight for the equalization fee (TIME, Aug. 24).
/-The house--a porticoed mansion in the ornate French Renaissance style made popular by Chicago's Columbian Exposition of 1893.--ED.
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