Roosevelt's Legs

Sirs: Your justification of yourself for your taste less references to Mr. Roosevelt is goosefood. I would like to be recorded among your readers who "command otherwise."; JOHN W. FARQUHAR Easton, Pa. Sirs: Your explanation of the several references in TIME to Mr. Roosevelt's physical infirmities only makes a bad matter worse. There is no excuse for such writing. TIME, frankly, needs some lessons in good manners. It lacks the fundamental virtue of reverence. . DAVID P. GAINES Minister First Baptist Church Waterbury, Conn. Sirs: . . . Don't let TIME descend to the stilted, prudish, uninteresting style of so many news publications. It makes the readers' picture more accurate to know whether a man struts, or gallops, or limps or hobbles. What's the difference? RALPH P. STODDARD Cleveland, Ohio Please continue your use of truthfully descriptive words about those whom you present in TIME. . . . I respect President-elect Roosevelt the more because he has not allowed physical difficulties to daunt him. . . . ELEANOR MARE Chicago, Ill. Sirs: Suppose a few of the 400,000 do wish you to be more orthodox -- orthodox--i.e, colorless -- in your write ups. Don't do it. In the case of the President-elect your out spoken frankness is less pointed than the prevailing skeleton-in -the -cupboard attitude. Achievement is enhanced by physical handicap. Along with your range and terseness your great asset is your lifelike picturing of humans and happenings. Carry on, TIME. A. S. MACGREGOR East Aurora, X. Y. No clear majority of readers "commands otherwise." Scores of letters through last week: 238 con, 252 pro. This TIME construes as a firm mandate to continue mirroring Nature with respect to President-elect Roosevelt, since objectors far more prone to write than approvers. Managers Praised . . . Congratulations on Jan. 9 issue, which shows TIME'S managerial staff as wide awake as its editorial half! JOHN DAVIS HATCH JR. Washington, D. C. Mrs. von Hindenburg at Luncheon

Sirs:

As a regular reader of TIME I have noted its unusual accuracy in reporting news. It is thus with hesitancy that I wish you to explain the statement in Jan. 2 issue of TIME, ". . . Lieut.-Col. Oscar von Hindenburg, whose brunette wife, about to bear a daughter. . . ."

It hardly seems possible that you should have learned of the sex of the child in time for this issue since the luncheon described took place only two days before Christmas in Germany. . . .

If TIME were not such a noteworthy disciple of authenticity in detail the questioned statement would have probably passed unnoticed. . . .

LIBERT CHANDLER

Bethlehem, Pa.

Frau von Hindenburg's babe was born day after the Christmas party at her father-in-law's, shortly before TIME, Jan. 2, went to press. Alert editing made it possible to include the Milestone in the news story.--ED.

Colored Roosevelt

Sirs:

BECAUSE TIME IS SO TRUTHFUL STOP SO NEWS AWAKE STOP WILL TIME BE SO KIND AS TO ANSWER. . . . WHO MADE THE PLATES ON THE NATURAL COLOR PHOTOGRAPH OF OUR NEXT PRESIDENT IX YOUR JANUARY SECOND COVER STOP BY WHAT MEANS WAS THIS NATURAL COLOR PHOTOGRAPH MADE STOP WHY HASN'T TIME ANNOUNCED SUCH A NOTEWORTHY CONTRIBUTION TO SCIENCE AS A NATURAL COLOR PHOTOGRAPHIC PROCESS THAT JUSTIFIES A POSITION ON TIMES COYER.

A. H. MACDONALD

Detroit, Mich.

The Roosevelt cover picture was produced by the Finlay color process, in commercial use since 1929, named for Clare Finlay, a London color photography pioneer. O. J. Jordan of Washington, D. C. who made the TIME photograph, explains that the Finlay process renders color photography almost as simple as ordinary black & white photography. The Roosevelt picture was taken with Photo flash bulbs for lighting, with an exposure of about 1/50 sec. The colors were recorded on one special sensitized plate, placed behind a taking screen made up of hundreds of thousands of infinitesimal tri-color (red, green, blue-violet) filters which absorb part of the light and transmit the remainder to the plate. This process produces a transparency which, held to the light, shows a photograph in original color.

Besides the Finlay process, only two others produce a color photograph in one exposure on a single plate. Other processes use three successive plates behind three successive color filters.--ED.

Gutmann's Heath Sirs:

I like to take you by the forelock. I was naturally pleased that one of my portraits, which Mr. Jewell, the art critic, had reproduced in the New York Times, had aroused your interest.

I came down with a thump when I saw TIME. My picture reproduced well (TIME, Dec. 12). The subject and even his rubber roller were mentioned, so was the photographer of my painting. The artist himself was thrust out of TIME and space.

BERNHARD GUTMANN

Norwalk, Conn.

To Painter Gutmann, apologies for not identifying him with his portrait of Woodcutter Howard Heath in action.--ED.

Akron's Spider

Sirs:

I am enclosing two clippings giving correct version of the sensationalized spider story you got out of the daily press. One clipping is 'my letter from the Sunday Times Press (Scripps-Howard newspaper), in which the long drawn out spider story was worked up. It might be said that the spider was observed and publicized in and by the newspaper, certainly we in this department did not do a thing!

Never in my experience has so much been made of so simple an incident. It somehow caught the newspapermen's fancy. Clippings have come from all over, indicating country-wide use, and worse and worse falsification of the story. It has been irritating. You understand it is not my desire to flee from the wrath of the various sentimentalists whose crank letters have come to me complaining of "cruelty," etc. But it is because the whole thing as far as our institution is concerned, is untrue. . . .

When your article in Dec. 19 issue came to my attention, I was prompted to exclaim, "Et lit?" . . . We had no observation, study or experiment going. The news reports were in error, and sensationalized and misleading. .

WALTER C. KRAATZ

Biology Department University of Akron Akron, Ohio

Banker Cooke

Sirs:

Why do you so frequently use an offensive adjective in writing about a person as you do? ... It seemed amusing to me until you stepped on my toes, as you have done on p. 41, 2nd column where you say "Died. Jay Cooke . . . grandson of the famed post-Civil War freebooting banker."

The original Jay Cooke was my father-in-law, we were both born in the city of Sandusky, Ohio and I know all about his career even before he achieved his deserved title of "Patriotic Financier of the Civil War" and I resent his being called a "freebooting banker. . . ."

CHARLES D. BARNEY

Philadelphia, Pa.

Ill-advised was TIME'S epithet "freebooting" for Philadelphia Banker Jay Cooke. A high-pressure floater of U. S. Government bond issues, he was called by friends "the man who won the Civil War." by foes an upstart monopolist, grown rich "by drippings from the Treasury." In 1865 he sold $700,000.000 of bonds in 140 working days. After Richmond fell he stopped a panic in New York City by buying in $20,000,000 of Governments which he later sold to the Government at a profit. Biographers rate him honest, clever, once too optimistic. After the War his ambition pyramided him into development of Northern Pacific Railway. His optimism held but railroad bonds did not. In 1873 Jay Cooke & Co. crashed, banks followed suit. The New York Stock Exchange closed for ten days. Widows & orphans whimpered, Cooke's foes excoriated the "reckless speculation . . . vaulting ambition that looks like gambling . . . [of] trusted agents of the Government." No freebooter, he caused "no single whisper of dishonor."--ED. Cyanide Credit

Sirs:

TIME, always accurate, will wish to know that the discoverer of the methylene blue treatment for cyanide poisoning (TIME, Dec. 19, p. 20) was not Messrs. Hanzlik and Leake, but Dr. Matilda M. Brooks, research biologist and wife of Dr. Sunnier C. Brooks of the zoology department of the University of California. Methylene blue is also used for carbon monoxide poisoning with equally startling results. It has been used several times to revive would-be suicides in San Francisco since the Reiveley case.

MIRIAM ALLEN DE FORD (MRS. HOWARD MAYNARD SHIPLEY)

Sausalito, Calif.

Mrs. Brooks suggested, Professors Paul John Hanzlik & Chauncey Depew Leake recommended. Health Director Jacob Casson Geiger ordered, Dr. Raymond Joseph Millzner dared use methylene blue as a specific antidote for cyanide poisoning.-- ED.

Prosperity Plant

Sirs:

I wish that TIME might contribute an item about a current fad ... something known as a "Depression Garden," or "Prosperity Plant," depending on which one of the -isms you happen to believe in. ...

H. B. WHITMORE

Oteen, X. C.

About a year ago, Andrew M. Vollmer, traffic manager of Cortright Coal Co. of Philadelphia, talking about old tricks with oldtimers, revived the saline crystallization principle, applied it in connection with Cortright Coal Co.'s "Beaver" bituminous coal. In October 1932 Cortright Coal Co.'s house organ Hot Stuff printed the following note:

GIRLS--HERE'S YOUR CHANCE TO GROW A "BEAVER" BUD

One medium sized lump of BEAVER coal, add six tablespoonfuls of water, six tablespoonfuls of salt and six tablespoonfuls of bluing. Put this mixture in a bowl. The lump of coal in a day or two begins to sprout a white crystalline substance which "grows" day by day [as the water evaporates]. If bluing is used a bluish tinge appears on the white covering. The general color effect can be varied with a few drops of color, and the "plant" keeps growing as long as salt water is added.

Don't miss this opportunity to spring a real surprise on your friends.

A handy substitute for bluing: mercurochrome.--ED.

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