Notes on an Incorrigible Sirs:

Gratified by your account of Internal Revenue Bureau's general counsel, Robert H. Jackson (TIME, March 11, p. 17), I wish it might have told more.

A proudly claimed cousin, too many times removed, Bob Jackson has long been a focus of admiration, is held in high regard by clients and colleagues by reason of his talents for incisive cross-examination and for graceful, literate and pointed oratory. . . .

Shrewd balancer of the real values in life, he had declined to become Democratic nominee for New York's attorney-generalship, turned down lucrative invitations to join eminent New York City law firms. Reasons: Family life too important to be infringed upon by politics; multiplied income of New York City practice over that in Jamestown (pop. 45,155) would not permit same gracious enjoyment of unostentatious luxuries--would have to live in city or commute, and he hates both; might be expected to work Saturdays, and reserves Saturdays for domestic pleasures; several times the income that keeps a comfortable cabin cruiser on Lake Chautauqua wouldn't maintain a yacht on the Hudson; stable of fine saddle horses can be kept almost adjoining spacious colonial home in Jamestown, but not so in New York City.

Every moment a stimulating personality, with a mind that continuously strikes sparks, a brilliant advocate, he is not "shy." I think, but merely modest, preferring recognition by reason of straightforwardness and sound accomplishments rather than stage effects.

So much for notes by a determined Republican on an incorrigible Democrat.

JOHN G. CURTIS

Curtis, Dale & Benson

Erie, Pa.

Bungled Broadside

Sirs:

In its issue of Dec. 31 TIME published an item under the caption "Wings for Tigers" in which it was alleged that the Japanese Government, speaking through the Rengo News Agency, issued a statement to the general effect that Japan would be able to best the U. S. in any naval race that might result from the abrogation of the Washington naval treaty.

While we do not doubt that the editors of TIME published the article in question in good faith on the basis of what information had come into their possession, we desire to point out two very important errors in their assertions:

1) The Japanese Government was in no way responsible for the opinions expressed in the "broadside" credited to Rengo and TIME was mistaken in assuming that it was, in view of the fact that Rengo's editorial policy is controlled by an independent board of directors elected from among its member newspapers, not by the Government.

2) The opinions were at the same time not those of Rengo but of a naval critic in Tokyo from whom Rengo obtained an interview as part of a special feature service on the naval issue which it was requested to provide for a group of provincial member papers. Through the error of an inexperienced translator, the interview was improperly credited and consequently was published by the Tokyo Japan Advertiser on Dec 20 as representing the views of Rengo. Rengo's denial was telegraphed to the U. S. by the Associated Press on the same day and it was also duly noted in the Advertiser's editorial of Dec.

We trust that TIME will be fair enough to do what it can towards correcting the extremely damaging misinformation given to its readers on this matter by according to this letter the publicity which the cause of American-Japanese friendship demands.

YUKICHI IWANAGA Managing Director

The Shimbun Rengo Tokyo, Japan

Holbein's Commission Sirs: If Jane Seymour (TIME, March 4, p. 34) commissioned Holbein to paint a portrait of Edward VI as a child, she must have done so on her deathbed. Edward was born Oct. 12, 1537, Jane died 12 days later, very probably of puerperal infection. The picture by Holbein shows Edward as a boy of possibly three or four years.*

FRANK P. MURPHY, M. D. Omaha, Neb.

Sirs:

Did Hollein take commissions from ghosts. . .? AGNES ANDREWS JACKSON Detroit, Mich. TIME'S error.--ED.

Share Cropper Sirs: Your article in TIME, March 4 [on share croppers], condenses in it a lot of willful exaggeration or inexcusable ignorance.

You quote a man named Eraser about "the peonage of 8,000,000 share croppers in the South." If this man had cared to inform himself he could have found that the farm census of 1930 showed for the entire cotton belt 2,500,000 cotton growers--landlords, renters and share croppers./- Then Norman Thomas, professional trouble maker, and others charge "wholesale evictions." So the share cropper is being held in peonage and evicted too.

Then Erskine Caldwell, he of the bizarre and the nasty, cooks up horrible stories; babies "sucking the dry teats of a mongrel bitch" God, do you suppose he believes it himself?

Being a cotton planter of 30 years' experience I know the good and bad of our agriculture. Abuses? Some (as in every human relation). Not every planter is a fair and generous landlord, nor is every tenant a devoted and honest worker. So let me be general and say that, in my experience, the share cropper is a pretty happy individual. Like the planter, his fortunes rise and fall with cotton and its price. He has many opportunities for bettering his condition and increasing his income. I know substantial planters who started as share croppers. Those who try can do.

Grave injustice is being done. The planters rank high in the South's citizenship, but they are being held up to the world as a lot of selfish crooks, exploiting the weak and helpless. There has been enough of this. Stop looking for three-legged chickens and get at the truth. MARK VALENTINE Operating Manager Union Securities Co. Ferda, Ark.

Poverty Policy Sirs: . . . Could anyone, heretofore perturbed at the physical slavery of Southern Negroes, imagine that these Negroes' condition has been materially bettered by the trading of their physical slavery for a joint yoke with their former masters in economic slavery, imposed by policies of the Government which abolished the other variety?

Any crop necessarily selling in an "unprotected" market, partly foreign, partly hostile, partly limited by exchange difficulties, but of which, nevertheless, production supplies must be bought in a "protected" market, is a "poverty crop," and the producers thereof are economic slaves--be they share croppers, tenants, landowners, whites or Negroes.

If there be a duty to provide for tenants evicted as a consequence of restricted production of the "poverty crop,'' on whom does such duty devolve--the economically enslaved, debt-ridden landlord or the Government responsible for policies that inflict poverty on all producers of such crop?

W. C. NEILL Vice President Peoples Bank & Trust Co. North Carrollton, Miss.

Crackpot Version Sirs: "It's great to be a Georgian," despite even TIME'S publicizing Erskine Caldwell's crackpot version of conditions in the Empire State of the South. Yanks! He gets paid to write that tomfoolery and the paragraph about the two children playing Romulus and Remus to a "dry-teated" hound is tops in the Uncle Tom's Cabin type of journalism.

. . . Author Caldwell has grossly erred and TIME, in playing up such far-fetched tripe, has reflected on the integrity of the people of a great State, and should hide its face.

... A few years back you harped on "lynchings"--now it's pellagra-ridden kiddies who can barely wobble to the little red school houses that are open only three months of the year. Call off the hounds, TIME! Georgia, like every other State, has her problems. To paint them in the ''gory'' hue of Caldwell is unfair without presenting at the same time the bright side. FRANK ROSSITER Reporter Savannah Morning News Savannah, Ga. TIME will gladly print news, bright or dark, about Georgia or any other place. --ED.

Caldwell's Hog Wallow Sirs: . . . Erskine Caldwell is seizing upon an isolated instance or two of injustice to tenant farmers by Jefferson County landowners to paint the county as a sink of iniquity. As a damyankee of many generations standing, I cannot be accused of rushing to the defense of my native State. But by profession trained to accurate observation and impartial reporting, and speaking from six years' intimate familiarity with Jefferson County, I can say that a more contemptible libel has never been uttered about any community.

What Caldwell would term the bourgeoisie of that county are cultured, kindly and humane people. Their attitude toward, and relationship with, the tenant classes, white and colored, is friendly and sympathetic in the highest degree. To be sure there are cases of social injustice in Jefferson County, as there are in every county in every State in the Union. But I have yet to see the community with as low a percentage of social injustice as that one which Caldwell would hold up to the world as a horrible example.

Erskine Caldwell is one of those neurasthenic egomaniacs in the infliction of which upon mankind the Creator seems to have been guilty of unnecessary harshness to an erring world. . . .

One superb talent Caldwell has. Give him a single stink and he can create a magnificent hog wallow, a singularly appropriate gift for those of his ilk.

WARREN H. PIERCE The Daily Clintonian Clinton, Ind.

"Smart Aleck" Sirs: . . . You better leave town after quoting from that smart aleck, Erskine Caldwell, because the Chamber of Commerces south of the Potomac will want to tar and feather you, and ride you on a rail for your dastardly inference that folks are starving in the South. I'll have you to know that we might have illiteracy, hookworm, inertia, lynchings, murder, pellagra and malnutrition, but never "starvation." They can starve in Russia if they want to (or if Hearst wants them to), but they better not starve in the South, because the Chamber of Commerce don't like it, and smart alecks like me and Erskine Caldwell write stories about it. JAMES HARRISON Alexandria, Va.

Father Sirs:

ERSKINE CALDWELL'S STORY ESSENTIALLY TRUE. NO INVESTIGATION MADE, EFFORTS BEING TO COVER UP FACTS NEWSPAPER PROPAGANDA IS BEING SENT IN EFFORT TO HIDE FACTS IN CASE. PEOPLE NOT ON GROUND DENOUNCE THE STORY AS FALSE. I. S. CALDWELL (Father of Erskine Caldwell) Pastor Presbyterian Church Wrens, Ga. Since sending the foregoing telegram, Father Caldwell was given the opportunity to assist in an investigation (see below).--ED.

Caldwell Called Sirs: I read with a great deal of interest and astonishment your edition of March 4 in which you quote from a recent article by Erskine Caldwell which appeared in the New York Post. I am not making direct answer to Caldwell in a communication addressed to you, but I wish to ask that you read the attached editorial from the Augusta Chronicle and the indignant denial of the charges made by Caldwell by prominent people from the section to which he refers. . . . . . . Until now no one has taken the trouble to call Caldwell's hand but I think it is now high time to do so.... THOMAS J. HAMILTON Editor The Augusta Chronicle Augusta, Ga. The forthright Augusta Chronicle sent newshawks, accompanied by Erskine Caldwell's father, to investigate Writer Caldwell's charges. The Chronicle's editorial challenge: "Once proven not to be true let's tell the world about it, so that millions of people in this country may not believe that we are heartless heathens. If by any chance Caldwell is right, let's know the truth, admit it with shame and humiliation and go about correcting it." For what the Augusta Chronicle admits, and what it has to tell the world, see p. 59--ED.

Browbeaten, Bulldozed Sirs: I just read your article under "Farmers" in TIME, March 4 and must say that you are on the right track at least. God help you to print more of the truth in forthcoming issues if it can help us poor whites (and blacks) who are share croppers in the Old South. I was "born and raised" on a farm in middle Georgia and know only too well what thieving, gouging, "chiseling," browbeating, bulldozing landlords do to us. This has been going on for generations and is not just born of the Depression. I am only 35 years old but am in reality an old man, what one reared in the "American high standard of living" would be at 65, all due to overwork in the cotton fields, together with undernourishment in my childhood. I cannot remember but two or three times in all my life when my hunger was fully appeased. These times were when I would steal a pig or chicken from the "old Mr." who owned the land, but I liked to got caught once and had to quit that. I have seen poor hungry Negroes get three to five years for killing one of their landlord's hogs. The only meat we ever get is salt fat pork, the kind you boil vegetables with, and only a mere pittance of that. In a way I was more lucky than some, in that I always had a hankering for book learning and have learned to read and write fairly well, but in a way this is a curse for I can read how people in the Northern cities actually get $10 to $12 a week relief, and do not have to work for it either. Why can't we get some sort of a break? I am not married (thank God), for I would not be a party to bringing more unfortunates like me into this world. . . .

ABRAHAM COOK Millen, Ga.

Toast Sirs: Have I been wrong all these years in thinking the British Navy drinks the Queen's health (TIME, March 11)? FRANCES W. TAYLOR St. Petersburg, Fla. Wrong since Queen Victoria died. The Navy drinks the health of the reigning sovereign.--ED.

Test Sirs: I'm curious to know how many Current Affairs test returns you get, their average. . . . P. H. MALLORY TJ. S. Supply Co. Omaha, Neb.

Sirs: This is a corking test.... Be sure to give us the scores so we will know how we rate with our fellow citizens. . . . JANET M. GEISTER Newark, N, J. Through last week 22,807 test answer sheets were received by TIME. Replies will be accepted until April 1, when tabulation of scores will be begun. TIME will publish results of tabulation, will keep individual scores confidential as promised.--ED.

-He was 2. -- ED. /-The 8,000,000 included the croppers' families.-- ED.

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