A. M. A. Attitude

Sirs:

In your comment (Sept. 21) on what Mr. Herman Seydel is said to have called his "long-sought single cure for arthritis," you take occasion to characterize the American Medical Association as an organization which takes the "attitude that no one should know anything at all about anything which might not be good for him."Were TIME an irresponsible, anti-medical sheet, the statement could be ignored, but I have always felt that TIME, in its discussions of medical matters, is generally sound as well as sympathetic to the problems of the medical profession.

The attitude of the American Medical Association toward the unwarranted and harmful publicity of the Seydel pronouncement was predicated on two simple and, what seem to me, obvious facts: First, and by far the more important, is the cruelty of leading sufferers from any disease to believe that a remedy--which has not been adequately tested by the only group competent to pass on the question of its efficacy --has been found. The tragedy that follows the announcements of various alleged cures is little known except to the medical profession; sufferers in stages in which they could be helped by medical science, abandon treatment and follow the wills-of-the-wisp until the chances for recovery are forever gone; others bankrupt themselves or their families in order to try the new panaceas. The second fact in the Seydel matter is: There was no justification for a scientific body devoted to chemistry to permit itself to be used as an unpaid agent for ballyhooing a proprietary medicine. These were the only factors involved in the Seydel matter. . . .

ARTHUR J. CRAMP, M.D. Chicago, Ill.

Sirs:

Dr. Morris Fishbein takes indignant and autocratic exception to the publicizing of a speech by Chemist Herman Seydel (TIME, Sept. 21).

As one dumb layman who is much better versed in the pathology of alcohols than in the chemistry of benzoates, I am not qualified to comment on the chemist's claims. But as a' bored layman who is tired of all this prattle about professional ethics, and with the A.M.A. in its sanctimonious stand as the sole arbiter of human health; I am vaguely reminded of one Louis Pasteur, chemist, and of how the medical confession, in a united front, battled his method of inoculation with virus to combat and cure hydrophobia.

ELMER ELLSWORTH Los Angeles, Calif.

Dartmouth '31

Sirs:

After reading with interest the story of Harvard's Class of '11 (TIME, Sept. 14), it occurred to me that many of your younger readers might be interested in a class five years out of college, a class thrown out into the world in '31 at about the worst period of the Depression.

Dartmouth's class of '31, 448 strong, has not fared too badly. With only two or three exceptions every man has a job of some sort. This has been true throughout the Depression as practically everyone has either found or made a job for himself from the time he left college.

The writer has received about 600 letters during the past four years from classmates and only in two instances can he recall any note of discouragement, even though some were forced into such work as building birdhouses, lifeguarding, etc. To show you how they went after jobs: One chap in New York pestered the personnel manager of a large New York concern so much that the latter finally hired him to handle other pestering college graduates.

Dartmouth's '31 has practically the same number (30) of lawyers, teachers, doctors, bankers and insurance agents. Other occupations vary from politicians to ski school proprietors to ladies underwear to junk dealers to yellow fever research to CCC officers to the Yankees (Red Rolfe) to airlines.

The class has about 75 children so far and the bachelor ranks are becoming thin already. Of the hundreds of letters received, none has expressed any feeling of remorse for four years of college.

If this class is a fair sample of other classes of '31, it will take more than a mere Depression to keep down your recent college graduate.

CRAIG THORN Hudson, N. Y.

Milk Solution

Sirs:

Gratified and surprised was at least one TIME reader by TIME'S straightforward reporting on New York's milk troubles and its Pisecks (Sept. 14). Even farm papers tread gingerly about the edges of the current U. S. dairy muddle, view it with nothing more vigorous than plaintive editorials. Perfectly true had TIME chosen to mention it, is the fact that New York's conditions are typical of every major milk market. New England's producers are equally bitter but less vocal.

To produce a thousand quarts of milk weekly requires 15-18 milch cows, $10,000 investment in farm, stock, and tools, two men working 14 hours a day, 365 in the year, day help in rush seasons. Weekly return on such a layout today, $40. Wage scale for union milk wagon drivers in Boston: $38 a week plus commission, three days off a month, two weeks' vacation with pay.

Reason for the farmer's plight is not, as TIME seems to imply, failure to put a duty on Brazil's babassu nut. Prime reason is compulsory pasteurization of milk in all major markets. Familiar is everyone with the cry of the orthodox medic that pasteurization kills disease bacteria which might be present in milk. Unfamiliar is the average person with the fact that lactic acid-producing bacteria normally present in milk are likewise killed, retarding souring, making milk a semi-perishable which may be marketed as fresh milk up to ten days from the cow, average city supply five days old on delivery. Thus, via the pasteurizer, every quart of milk produced east of the Great Plains is potential fluid milk for city markets, arbitrary milk "sheds" or inspection areas notwithstanding. Farmers, whose milk always went to a creamery, cheese factory or condensery, now fight for the urban outlets. Dealer-controlled farmer groups, such as Dairymen's League help the farmer cut his own throat, make a united front impossible. The city distributor buys from 50 to 100% more milk than he can sell as such, juggles it among various classifications, does his own weighing and testing, returns to the farmer, in effect, what he pleases.

The customer pays the distributor, except during price wars, close to a fair price for milk. In cases where milk becomes Gold Seal, Gold Crest, or Zilch Farms Special, on the way through the plant, by virtue of a fancy closure, a point or two of butterfat, the customer pays too much. AAA auditors reported that New England's potent H. P. Hood & Sons, biggest N. E. distributor had, for five years return 25% on capital invested after all charges, paid company officers up to $75,000 a year.

All attempts to regulate this unsavoury mess have uniformly fizzled leaving the, regulator with little but a terrific headache for his pains as Secretary Wallace or the administrative officer of any State control board will testify. Only possible solution: a partial about face by the zealous medics, admitting that pasteurization is not absolutely perfect, permitting enough high grade, locally produced milk to be sold raw to set a standard of what fresh milk should be, let the customer do the rest. Possibility of this occurring in the near future--nil. . . .

WILFRED C. DUNN Rowley, Mass.

Rehash

Sirs:

Had Catalogue been listed at $1.00, under or at most a buck and a half; and had you not given it nearly an entire column in your Sept. 14 issue I probably wouldn't be so inquisitive now.

Magazine readers as well as the elephant, rarely ever forget a story. I am not accusing Author George Milburn of gross plagiarism for he might also be the writer of the two stories that were recalled to my mind when reading your review, p. 90-91. But if he is the same, I believe that the public should be told of the "rehash" before paying $2.00 for the story.

The part of the story told on the first page, regarding arrival of the catalogues, what everyone ordered, the subsequent burning and reordering, I read possibly five years ago in one of the national magazines. I am sorry that memory fails me on that point, but after all there is some limitation to the extent that grey matter can be accurate.

The section, however, regarding the taxi driver, Red Currie's Sizzle Pants, the murder, death of Spike's child, in fact--and I haven't read your version at all--I'd wager a sum that the murder was committed by a boy, blind with fury and fear, with a shotgun because he found a pair of undies that belonged to his gal in Spike's taxi. She had received them that day from the mail order house, her old man had confiscated them and they fell into the victim's possession when he asked the gal's old man for a grease rag. . . .

I am unable to remember where I read the first, but the latter appeared last winter in a copy of The Southern Review, literary publication of the Louisiana State University. . . .

I think I'll get drunk with my two bucks.

A. G. WEEMS

The Commercial Appeal Memphis, Tenn.

Had Reader Weems a truly elephantine memory he might have recalled that the magazine short stories which reminded him of George Milburn's Catalogue were written by George Milburn.

Like many another novelist, Author Milburn sold fragments of his book to Harper's, Collier's, Esquire, The Southern Review.--ED.

Voice of Roosevelt

Sirs:

Why did the "greatest historians of our day" fail to mention the Drought conference between President Roosevelt and Governor Landon over the "March of Time"? . . .

MICHAEL F. SHANNON JR. Los Angeles, Calif.

The "March of Time" has complied with a White House request not to simulate the voice of Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he speaks as U. S. President.--ED.

Voice of TIME

Sirs:

As a regular subscriber I wish to ask you . . . to give a brief account of the ''Voice of TIME," the man whose intelligent, thrilling, descriptive announcing of current events and history has given us all so much pleasure I ... I think there are thousands who agree with me, when I say that there is nothing so absolutely thrilling as his magnificent "TIME MARCHES ON!"

FLORENCE A. WESTLAKE W. Somerville, Mass.

The Voice of TIME, both on the air and in the cinema, is that of Cornelius Westbrook Van Voorhis, 35, tall (6 ft. 1 in.), brown-haired New Yorker who has also broadcast as Hugh Conrad. In his six years with radio he has worked for some 50 programs using at least five names (some chosen by the sponsors). Bored by the U. S. Naval Academy, he spent his $150,000 patrimony on a leisurely trip around the world. Unsuccessful on the stage, he got a job at $18 a week introducing Jimmy Durante and Cab Galloway at the now defunct Silver Slipper night club, shortly stepped up into radio. He is one of very few public announcers whose voice can be used both in the U. S. and in England. Of his voice said the London Sunday Referee: "It has neither an American nor an English accent, but it grips the attention as few screen voices do." Voice Van Voorhis spends holidays tinkering his boat, sailing with his wife, his young daughter Nancy, 2.--ED.

Photostamp

Sirs:

Cameraddicts and philatelists among TIMErs ,will be interested to know that the portraits on the new Edward VIII stamps of which TIME [Sept. 14] says "the new stamps have simple, modernistic and almost photographic profile views of Edward VIII which really look like him" have actually been reproduced from a recent photograph of the Sovereign by Hugh Cecil Portraits, Ltd. of London, England.

For the first time in history the stamp portrait of a Sovereign has been reproduced from a photograph.

GEORG RUTHENBERG

Ruthenberg Color Photography Co. Hollywood, Calif.

England's popular new stamp does not clearly establish precedent. In February 1935 the Dominican Republic issued a photostamp of her Dictator-President Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina at the same time that she changed the name of her capital city from Santo Domingo to Trujillo.--ED.

Sirs:

Some time ago I read that the Rumanian Government had to issue new postage stamps because of an international ruling requiring all nations to print the name of their country on their stamps.

Why then can England issue stamps without any name, as shown in your last magazine?

J. J. NlMS Orwell, Ohio

Since England's first postage stamp (1840) was also the world's first, it needed no national identification, bore none. Proud that their Monarch's face is known to earth's end, Britons continue their tradition.

The Cairo Postal Union Convention (March, 1934) resolved that all postage stamps should bear "in Latin characters as far as possible, indication of the country of origin." But England, though a member of the Postal Union, has never ratified the ruling nor adhered to it.--ED.

Losers

Sirs:

Talmadge was your man-of-the-week for the Sept. 7 issue, and he has since been repudiated by his constituents.

Helen Jacobs was your next selection, Sept. 14, and the rapid dethronement of this ex-queen must have been an embarrassment to you throughout the week.

Could it possibly be that the selection of Republican Chairman Hamilton for succeeding these two was motivated by other than pure and lofty sentiments? Having backed two losers, are you fatalistically adding to the succession one you hope will also be a loser, or--? . . .

PAUL Y. WILLETT

Willett, Clark & Co. Chicago, Ill.

Appearance on TIME'S cover does not guarantee a current news character immortality. James Bryant Conant, whose photograph fronted the Sept. 28 issue, is still President of Harvard University.--ED.

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