Mellon's Ghost

Sirs:

"Last week for the first time the U. S. Government hired the services of a commercial advertising agency. . . ." (TIME, April 30).

Perhaps the W. G. N. (World's Greatest Newsmagazine) would like to know that the U. S. Government succumbed first ten or eleven years ago when the Treasury became an account on the books of (to my way of thinking) advertising's No. 1 salesman, Albert Davis Lasker, dynamic Texan.

His Lord & Thomas sent me to Washington to ghost a thin book for Secretary of the Treasury Mellon. I never got to meet Mr. Mellon but the book, How to Save Your Savings: by Andrew W. Mellon must have pleased him.

It boosted savings certificates, reached a 500,000 U. S. distribution, equaled the record of E. M. Hull's The Slicik, was climbing up on the 1,100,000 sales of The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come.

Alas, Lord & Thomas advertising (with Andy's and my book for bait) was getting such terrific results that the banks forced the Treasury to withdraw the book for fear people would syphon the savings banks to buy Treasury certificates.

Anyway, for the record, I think Andy ought to get credit for a bestseller.

NORMAN KLEIN

The New York Post New York City

Dysentery Up-to-Date

Sirs: TIME has in the past few months made reference to the dysentery epidemic in Chicago last summer during the World's Fair. With the 1934 edition of the Fair to open in about a month, people the country over are interested in knowing whether health conditions in Chicago have improved. Last summer's tragic epidemic was carefully and completely ignored by the "free press" of Chicago, allowing thousands of people from all over the world to walk blindly into a dangerous situation that resulted in many fatalities and spread the disease all over the country--a situation over which the health and medical authorities of the city and the State of Illinois have since engaged in an undignified quarrel, everybody frantically disclaiming responsibility. The suppression of any mention of the epidemic was abetted by the daily press of the country at large and by the news-gathering agencies. The right of the people to a free press, of which we have heard so much of late, was denied, and the seeds of a deadly disease were sown among innocent victims of a cowardly and conniving press and commercial greed. . . . C. E. LOWRY Editor The Gibson Courier Gibson City, Ill. According to Dr. Morris Fishbein, editor of the American Medical Association Journal, travelers need have no more fear of visiting Chicago than any other large city. The occurrence of amebic dysentery has fallen to two or three cases a week--a normal condition following an outbreak-- and doubtless will be reduced further. Last cases reported were three on April 19. one traceable directly to the Congress Hotel, which is having its entire plumbing system rebuilt. Extra precautions against a recurrence of the disease will be taken this year by the World's Fair Health Commission which includes Dr. Fishbein.--ED. Death Pictures Sirs: When the bloody corpse of Stavisky was among the photographs in TIME Jan. 29] I was surprised, and disgusted, but felt that such a slip could not happen again. Having subscribed--without a break--to TIME since March 1923, I have had ample opportunity to notice that TIME does not indulge in Tabloid photographs nor Gum-Chewers-Sheetlet reporting. Since the number of April 9 displaying on p. 19 another even bloodier corpse I feel you have definitely joined the brotherhood for which you profess such smug scorn. I realize this is a waste of typewriter ink and time, but hope that my protest will be one of many. Few people enjoy and none needs the sight of photographed corpses. It is revolting, and cheap, and I would like to think that the person responsible for these two pictures among your high-class collection had been, or would be, called down. . . . BEATRICE U. FALAMON

Ann Arbor, Mich.

Corpses, when eminently newsworthy, will continue to find a place in TIME.--ED. Stomach Pictures Sirs: Your account of the ''stomach camera" [TIME, April 16] was interesting, but incomplete. I fully expected the sequel in the following week's issue. Is not the success or failure of the contrivance as newsworthy as the use of it? ...

E. M. BROS

Minneapolis, Minn.

The "Gastro-Photor"-graphs taken inside the stomach of a suspected cancer sufferer turned out well, according to Philadelphia's Hahnemann Hospital. But what they showed, doctors refused to reveal.-- ED. Fat "Cures"

Sirs: The article "Fat & Drugs" under "Medicine in your issue of April 30 was excellent. Particularly interesting to your readers must be the composition of the so-called obesity cures. You failed to mention one of the most widely advertised of these--Kruschen Salts. This was analyzed by the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station at New Haven some years ago I Bulletin 341. July, 1932] and was found to consist "essentially of a mixture of Epsom and Glauber salts.'' This puts it in the class with the other "cures" that work thru their laxative action. . . . HENRY S. JOHNSON

The Connecticut College of Pharmacy New Haven, Conn.

Steffens & Strikers

Sirs:

Two of your correspondents in San Francisco have called up asking for details of Mr. Steffens' "leading and organizing of the workers in agricultural strikes" in California. I told both carefully that he has been doing no such thing; you were doubtless misled by the article in the New York Times for which the writer has since apologized. However, you may like to see a copy of the letter Mr. Steffens wrote to the Governor, Herbert Fleischacker, Traffic Chief Cato, newspaper editors and sheriffs and district attorneys and attorneys for big ranchers and some State and Federal conciliators and NRA chiefs. Enough money was collected for a typewriter and considerable over. Mr. Steffens was Chairman, Secretary and Treasurer of the Caroline Decker Typewriter Fund. If this be "leading," "agitating," "organizing," or "egging on" the workers, this he did for the little 21-year-old Union Secretary.

ELLA WINTER

[MRS. LINCOLN STEFFENS]

Carmel, Calif.

Author Steffens' letter:

Feb. 5, 1934. Governor Rolph Sacramento, Calif. Dear Governor:

Pursuant of my unpromising experimental probing for humor in high places, I am going to ask you to contribute personally a dollar or so toward a fund to buy a typewriter for Caroline Decker, the tiny little labor agitator who is doing what no big A. F. of L. leader has ever dared undertake: to organize the migratory workers of the lovely orchards and vegetable ranches of California. You remember her? She is the so-called amazon who led the workers in their well-led strikes for a living wage in the valleys last year. She has to carry on the same struggle this year, and next year, and the next. She thinks she can make consumers, citizens and human beings out of these peon producers. An audacious experiment, as dubious as mine, and therefore worth boosting. But she hasn't even a typewriter to make clear to us and to the workers, the strategic plans she draws.

Let's help her to a machine. I will, if you will. You might induce some of the impartial police, personally, to join us: Chief Cato. for example. I may ask some picked ranchers to come in on it and your Mr. Secretary Smith could invite the highbrow newspapermen he sees daily. They might have a sense of humor. If the fund should exceed the price of one cheap typewriter I'll keep the difference for the purchase of another if the first one should be wrecked in some righteous raid.

Yours solemnly, LINCOLN STEFFENS

Carmel, Calif.

Governor Rolph's secretary replied that, because of ''so many requests of a similar nature for donations," he could not contribute. Nevertheless, the campaign netted $105, provided Caroline Decker with a typewriter, an ample supply of ribbons and paper.--ED. Egg-Sucking Switz Sirs: Re: One-hole Egg Mystery. The skepticism of your correspondent. Mr. William Tarrant Jr. (April 20 is worthy of a Bertillon! He is correct in believing that the great one-hole egg mystery will undoubtedly "make those French Johnnies sit back, take their hats off and scratch their heads," even despite your learned editorial note on how expert zoologists empty eggs with fine silver tubes and air pressure. For it happens that my brother* has always had a great fondness for raw eggs, and when he was a youngster my mother was more than once startled by discovering that a box apparently full of eggs was really half empty! But it would undoubtedly be infra-dig for Scotland Yard or the Surete Generale even to entertain such a simple explanation! By the way, TIME in its article on L'Affaire d'Espionnage, March 26. repeats another old canard by saying that my father "Theodore Switz [was] a naturalized Russian." Actually my father was born in Madison. Wis. (U. S. A.) in 1857. His parents were Germans, not Russians. . . . THEODORE MACLEAN SWITZ

East Orange, N. J.

Letters Supplement

Sirs:

TIME'S Letters Supplement is too good to be of any good at all. ... I read the Letters Supplement and then I think of how much my brother TIME reader who is not a TIME'S Letters Supplement reader is missing.

There are three remedies: . . .

1. Merge TIME and TIME'S Letters Supplement. (1 favor this remedy.)

2. Charge real money for all copies of TIME'S Letters Supplement. (This country is not yet Communistic enough to believe that anything free might have a high value.)

3. Abolish TIME'S Letters Supplement. . . . (We can't worry over . . . how much worse we would have been if we had not known about it.)

HENRY STONER

Barberton, Ohio

Until further notice the Letters Supplement will be sent free to all readers who request it of TIME'S Circulation Department, 350 East 22nd Street, Chicago, Ill. Supplement No. 8. available this week, includes letters (some illustrated) on the Secret Service. Kermit Roosevelt. War. Curtis Dall "suicide," Dancer Ted Shawn, Seattle politics, ancient water-closets, Revolution, chastity belts. -- ED. Jarred Australian

Sirs:

Is TIME always accurate as well as timely? In Jan. 1, p. 5, col. 1 you report:

"Then the President settled down to open three clothes hampers full of presents sent by admirers all over the world."

Are you like Homer "who nods" or do your officials err?

As one who intensely admires your President, knowing his interest in sailing ships I suggested

(Continued on p. 73) that I might send him an etching or a print of a sailing ship. The official reply, couched in the usual courteous phrasing said:

"The President collects representations of sailing ships made in the various media given in your letter, but while the President is appreciative of your interest, it would be contrary to his practice to accept gifts of this or other nature from citizens or subjects of foreign States."

It is a jar too, when one English-speaking nation refers to another English-speaking people as ''foreigners." GEORGE FITZPATRICK

Superintendent

New South Wales Community Hospital Sydney, Australia

Never one to solicit personal gifts, the President accepts those. which come to him. He might, however, seek to discourage a would-be donor who consults him in advance, as did Reader FitzPatrick.--ED. Cubans' Pay

Sirs:

In TIME of April 23, I note in Foreign Affairs under the heading Cuba, you say: "by raising the minimum for Government employes' salaries to $30 a week."

It should be $30 a month, and you can imagine that we are really sorry that it is not as you state as we would be quite well off in Cuba if it were.

I have been receiving TIME for the last four or five years as a Christmas present from my father, and lately when the Cuban press was muzzled, most of our information about Cuba we received from TIME.

N. R. GUITERAS

Matanzas, Cuba.

Unsanctioned Fundamentalists Sirs:

Congratulations for catching a highly newsworthy item in your blurb for the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions [TIME, April 23]., Charming Missionary Woodbridge and his sober-sided backers are out to split the Presbyterian church. This plight would be news indeed to worldly cynics.

However, you overstate the case when you say that "they [Fundamentalists in the Presbyterian Church] set up the Independent Hoard." ... On April 16 the Philadelphia Presbytery, long the recognized stronghold of Fundamentalism in that church, repudiated the Independent Hoard, went on record as "disapproving the formation of a new board." Conservatives and liberals united to defend the board of the church and its secretary, Robert Elliott Speer. Some weeks ago Dr. Machen, head of the new Board, sought to transfer his membership from the New Brunswick Presbytery (Princeton), where he was hopelessly alone, to Philadelphia, where he hoped to rally the forces of Fundamentalism. So many opposed his reception that he is "a man without a presbytery" until his status is determined by the Pennsylvania Synod in June.

Fundamentalists of the Philadelphia type have long ceased to be a power in national Presbyterianism. The Independent Board, Messrs. Machen, Woodbridge. et al. are without sanction even in Philadelphia Presbytery.

Much praise to TIME for publicizing an important issue. More, if it presents the whole story. The schism of a major denomination, which yellow journals love to contemplate, is not as imminent as you suggest.

REV. RAYMOND H. ROSCHE Pastor

Bethesda Presbyterian Church

Philadelphia, Pa.

Sirs:

In reference to the article "Missionaries Old-Style," p. 59, of TIME, April 23, may I say the following:

1) One not acquainted with the facts might assume from the article that those Presbyterians not allied with the so-called "Fundamentalist" group were automatically to be classed as "Liberals." This is not true, for there are thousands of the approximately 10,000 ministers of the Presbyterian church, U. S. A., who are true to every doctrine mentioned, i. e., Virgin Birth. Inspiration of the Scriptures, etc.. who nevertheless condemn the rebel Westminster

Seminary and the Independent Board of Foreign Missions.

2) Presbyteries of our denomination are everywhere taking official action deploring the newly organized Board. . . .

3) In the interests of accuracy, you should be reminded that in your article, in every place where the word ''Presbyterian'' is mentioned, referring to the denomination and the official recognized Board of Foreign Missions, that the full name is "The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America."' There are twelve denominations in this country holding the Presbyterian system of doctrine. . . . The Presbyterian Church in the United States, . . . frequently confused with our church, . . . has a membership of about 500,000, while the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., has over 2,000,000 members.

REV. EARL B. VANZANDT

The Hyde Park Presbyterian Church Boston, Mass.

Cord in Detroit Sirs:

Startling error of omission in your airmail map (TIME, April 23, p. 24) is "the "Before Cancellation and After" route of American Airways from Buffalo, across Canadian soil, through Detroit and into Chicago. Cartographer and reporter both failed to delineate accurately any but the Newark-Buffalo portion of Mr. Cord's Newark-Chicago ''Valley Route." . . . The route is too important to omit. With its inauguration May 3, 1933, Mr. Cord's American Airways became the first transportation company to put geographically off-line Detroit on a direct New York-Chicago trunk line. How important this was to the Fourth City can be outlined briefly: It reduced Detroit-New York passenger fare more than under that in effect over the next-best air routeing. It has carried some 1,900 eastbound passengers out of Detroit in less than a year. It cut 9% to 24% off Detroit-Newark travel time compared to the alternate routeing (American Airways to Cleveland, thence by United Air Lines to Newark). , _ It improved Detroit's airmail, passenger and air express service by providing more frequent as well as faster service. It gave Detroit shippers air express service to New York and eastern points on fast schedules and at low rates--a combination that had not been available previously. . . . C. A. STEVENS JR. Detroit. Mich.

Schoolboy Crime

Sirs:

After a careful check on your recent articles published under the heading Education. I must conclude that this department is somewhat inferior to the high standard of other departments of your magazine. For instance, in your issue of April 23 you take great pains to explain the sordid details of an unfortunate occurrence which might appear to greater advantage under "Crime."

[Referring to the case of Chicago Schoolboy George Rogalski. 13, who maltreated a 21-year-old girl.--ED.] Here's for more constructive and fewer sensational educational articles.

K. W. MACKENZIE

Boston, Mass.

When the Superintendent of Schools in the second largest city in the land orders psychoanalysis for all pupils who appear abnormal, it is major news of education.-- ED. TIME in the Senate "s: On April 4 about 2.30 p. m. my daughter and [ visited the U. S. Senate and heard Mr. La Follette talk for half an hour, on increased taxation for large incomes. My 11-year-old daughter was very much amazed to see the presiding officer of the Senate reading TIME and never once looking up or noticing Mr. La Follette. It is on her suggestion that I write to tell you of one of the unusual places in which one finds TIME being read. HELEN C. GILMAN

Rochester, N. Y.

*Robert Gordon Switz, who with his wife awaits trial in Paris for alleged participation in an "international spy ring." Scotland Yard detectives were mystified to find dozens of blown eggshells in the Switzes' London apartment (TIME, April 2). -- ED.

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