Dream House
Sirs:
As a 13-year-old student interested in architecture, enclosed plan will disclose additional errors to those indicated in TIME (Oct. 17).
My plan [see cut] would give a bathroom common to both bedrooms and a closet for each. Also permitting the bedrooms to obtain westerly view. The cook would find both his kitchen and bedroom much more convenient and comfortable in my plans.
WILLIAM KRISEL
Beverly Hills, Calif.
>TIME applauds Student Krisel's attempt but prefers Franklin Roosevelt's own plans of his Hyde Park "dream house." Some objections to the Krisel plan: the kitchen is too narrow, the pantry at the wrong end, windows badly spaced, partitions awkwardly arranged; and there is no way into the farther bedroom except through the nearer one.--ED.
Sirs:
Architects Roosevelt and Toombs, both nonprofessional and professional, as well as TIME, have overlooked both dining room and breakfast room in Architect Roosevelt's dream house.
Perhaps democratic Architect Roosevelt plans to eat his meals in the pantry or kitchen.
HERBERT MARCUS JR.
Dallas, Texas
>Architect Roosevelt deliberately omitted a dining room from his plans, will eat breakfast in bed, other meals in the living room or on the terrace.--ED.
Keynote
Sirs:
You print Chamberlain's "Keynote" (TIME, Oct. 17, p. 22) with no hint that it is a quotation. See Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, II, ii, 107 ff:
"O, it is excellent To have a giant's strength; but it is
tyrannous
To use it like a giant."
One wonders if (had he quoted it to Hitler) the German would have replied with Lucio's aside.
ROBERT WITHINGTON
Northampton, Mass.
> Said Lucio: "That's well said."--ED.
Epithet
Potbellied Sirs:
Naturally, if you are not potbellied, the epithet rolls off you like water from a duck's back. But I have strong suspicions you are, and if so, as the children say, "I hope that stang!" That is your modus operandi! How do you like it applied to yourself? I hope it raises your blood pressure.
FLORENCE KRANZ
Hollywood, Calif.
> Sorry; just like a duck.--ED.
Times Change
Sirs:
Times change. Things are different today. Looking through The Saturday Evening Post of Oct. 5 I find the following ads-- Boston Garter, Daisy Air Rifle, Chiclets, Holeproof Hosiery, Lea & Perrins, Florsheim Shoes, Van Camp's Pork & Beans, Packard cars, Gold Medal Flour etc., etc. The first 31 words of the first editorial entitled "The Howl and the Howlers," are "Glancing casually over a day's news we learn that investors, not knowing what Roosevelt will do next, fear 'that the little of value that is left to them will soon vanish.' "
That from the S.E.P. of Oct. 5, 1907.
I submit this for the smile that's in it and trust I am not giving too much aid and comfort to the enemy.
Times change? Things are different to-day ?
CHARLES HALL
New York City
Song
Sirs:
The boys down at the Grange don't bother much with international politics but they tell me Secretary Wallace has dedicated a song to the AAA's fallow acres.
It's called "I hadn't anyone till you."
ROBERT MORRIS
Long Beach, N. Y.
Job Wanted
> In accordance with its announcement of October 24, TIME herewith prints its second* "want-ad" letter, will print one such letter every week for the next few weeks.
For those who came in late, TIME repeats its conditions: 1) letters must be accompanied by at least two letters of reference from businessmen, clergymen etc. of the writer's acquaintance; 2) TIME reserves to itself the right to choose which, if any, letters it will print; 3) prospective employers must satisfy themselves of each applicant's merits.
From the first flood of applications TIME draws this further condition: letters must be brief, written in advertisement form, and, for the writer's sake, not plain dull.--ED.
Sirs:
During the past ten months I have, with a great deal of aggressiveness and persistency, tried every possibility, even to what appeared to be the most fantastic, in my unsuccessful attempt to find employment.
I registered at and frequently visited ten of the best employment agencies in New York City. . . . My advertisement for a position in the New York Sunday paper which specializes in that field brought no results. . . . As advertisements appear in the papers I have answered them. I have had but one reply. Alas! the interview produced only an invitation to dinner! (It was not accepted.)
I went to my friends. ... I tried visiting firms in person. . . . Finally, believing that somewhere this side of a ledge at the Gotham there is a niche for me, I tried writing my story to well known persons in various fields, persons to whom job-getting would normally involve nothing more than a telephone call. There have been no replies. I am not from the tenements nor from the Junior League and assistance to me would bring them nothing of publicity or drama!
I am 32, have had two years at college and nine years of secretarial-stenographic experience. I have worked regularly as secretary for the medical director of an insurance company, two sales (engineering) executives, an author, and an engineer; and as substitute secretary for a publisher, psychiatrist, eye specialist, architect and columnist. In addition to my secretarial duties I have in many instances done some employing, assisted in the management of the office and absorbed many of the details, including the handling of a large part of the correspondence without dictation.
I am adaptable, resourceful, readily absorb and enjoy responsibility. While I could hope that Frank Capra, Walter Lippmann, Eduard Benes, Rudy Vallee, Mrs. Roosevelt, Max Reinhardt, James E. Cain, Grover Whalen, Madame Chiang Kaishek, E. Alexander Powell or James Norman Hall are in need of an aide, I am entirely unencumbered and would gladly go anywhere in the world where I could find congenial surroundings and work. I have lived abroad.
While I have always worked in metropolitan centres and am accustomed to their tempo, I do not object to isolation. As a matter of fact I have an idea that I could be valuable to a creative writer or other worker living in the country. I drive an automobile.
Although faced with some unpleasant facts, I still refuse to believe that there is no place for me. Will you take the stand with me, TIME?
JUDITH MARSDEN
New York City
Men Wanted
Sirs:
To: The Editor, TIME, The Weekly Newsmagazine, Chicago, Ill.
From: Stephen Abbot, Attorney at Law (not practicing), farm owner and manager; farms located in central Illinois and northeast Utah.
Subject: Paul C. Smyth's letter published in TIME, Aug. 8. "Situation Wanted." Evidently I was one of the 16 who wrote Smyth. This valley needs man power. There are farming opportunities here for energetic, ablebodied, willing workers. . . . Climate similar to that of Denver, elevation 5,280, to that of Salt Lake City, elevation 4,300 ft. (elevation my home 4,777) Bees, turkeys, hogs, sheep, cattle, hay, grain do very well. I can supply two families with land and irrigation water.
Why is there idle land here? Main reason is lack of a railroad. U. S. Highway 40 crosses this basin. Two daily stages, Denver-Salt Lake, in summer; one in winter. There is a place for ambitious farmers here.
STEPHEN ABBOT
Randlett, Uintah County, Utah U.S.A., Retired; U.S.M.A., class 1902. Reference: Utah State National Bank (President of this Bank is Orval W. Adams, this year President of American Bankers' Association) ; also Hillsboro National Bank, Hillsboro, Ill.
Great and Screwy
Sirs: All thanks to TIME for coining a seven-word phrase which sums up volumes--"The great and screwy State of California" (TIME, Oct. 24, p. 12). Have lived here some time and notice that screwiness is even more of a tourist attraction than scenery or climate. Visitors from the East don't show much interest in Yosemite, the Redwoods or the orange groves, but they fall all over themselves to see evidences of our human phenomena--such as the folks at Aimee's Angelus Temple and on Hollywood Boulevard, the Iowans at Elysian Park, and supporters of the "$30-every-Thursday." In short, the pinheads have at last eclipsed the halfdomes on the California scene.
HAROLD REYLAN
San Francisco, Calif.
Favorite Actor
Sirs:
Is Walter Huston the President's favorite actor--or have more vital matters prevented his attendance at the theatre--or does he care little for the theatre?
For a good tonic, I respectfully suggest that President Roosevelt go to see "quick-silvered," electric Tallulah Bankhead when he wants complete relaxation. Miss Bankhead has the faculty to make you forget everything, except what is transpiring on the stage.
CALDER B. VAUGHAN
A Roosevelt Admirer
Chicago, Ill.
>No ardent theatregoer, Franklin Roosevelt prefers to watch movies at the White House. He has never said that Walter Huston is his favorite actor; he has never seen Actress Tallulah Bankhead, the daughter of his Speaker of the House, on the stage, but has met her at a White House reception.--ED.
Release Date
Sirs:
Is it true that you moved TIME'S release date up to Thursday to get your advertisers' copy in the hands of the people who are going to get $30 every Thursday, before they get it all spent?
HAROLD M. GAVINS
Charleston, Ill.
Sirs:
As the postman handed me, face up, my copy of TIME [Oct. 17], even in the half-dark hall I could see the good news blazoned across the front cover--"Now you can read TIME on Thursday." Peace, it's wonderful--time was exactly 11:15 Saturday.
You may know about mail deliveries in other places, but, Mr. TIME, you don't know Jersey City. I suggest that in making your announcement in subsequent issues of TIME, you state it thusly: "Now you can read TIME on the same day of the week you have always read it--which depends on your local Post-master."
HERBERT WATSON
The Corporation Trust Co.,
New York City
Sirs:
As long as TIME comes out once a week, what difference does it make on what day it is printed?
Probably Professor Einstein could explain it all, but I don't see how you can print the news before it happens, and your explanation is childish.
ALLAN T. WHEELER
Weston, Mass.
Sirs:
. . News happens when it happens and don't start becoming news any sooner than it does happen, and therefore to try to make your subscribers' eyes stick out by telling them that because you appear hereafter on Thursday instead of on Friday they are getting the news one day faster is like telling a boy that he is getting more than 24 hours in the day if he arises at 6 a. m. instead of 7 a. m.
W. T. CURTIS
Detroit, Mich.
> Let Readers Wheeler and Curtis pay attention. Of course TIME is not printing the news "before it happens'' but it is getting the news to its readers one day sooner. It necessarily takes time to print 700,000 and more copies of a magazine. By still going to press the same day it always has but speeding up its printing schedule, TIME now gets to its readers (local post-masters permitting) on Thursdays instead of Fridays.--ED.
Poets' Pay
Sirs:
Apropos of your article re poets' incomes (TIME, Oct. 17), I have been wondering how much Ogden Nash is able to shake the Muse down for in the course of a year.
JACK HARTLINE
Olympia, Wash.
>A good year might net him close to $20,000 but for the past two years Mr. Nash has not seriously courted the Muse.--ED.
No Snags
Sirs:
Since TIME prides itself on accurate reporting, it may not resent my calling its attention to certain crucial misstatements of fact in "Imperishable Thoughts" (TIME, Oct. 24, p. 40).
TIME does me the honor of supposing that I chose the great books--"classics"--which are the required textbooks at St. John's. Except for the addition of numerous scientific works, the list is substantially that used for many years at Columbia University in its honors course. It is now published by the American Library Association under the title Classics of the Western World.
"For four years they will study in classes only the 100 classics, no modern thinkers, no modern science." TIME apparently substantiates this by listing the books studied but, curiously enough, it omits the books read in the fourth year. The books are read chronologically, and the fourth year, which is devoted exclusively to "modern thinkers, modern science," includes among others: Voltaire, Marx, James, Freud, Faraday, Darwin, Russell & Whitehead, Hilbert, Gauss. I suspect that St. John's College is the only liberal arts college in America which requires of every student four years of laboratory science. It also requires four years of mathematics, four years of languages.
Some of the books were out of print, or not in English-- ". . . the college . . . had run afoul of its first big snag." Unexpectedly? Hardly. The faculty contains competent scholars; we hire the printers; no snags to date.
STRINGFELLOW BARR
President St. John's College
Annapolis, Md.
To St. John's College seniors, TIME gladly restores their "modern thinkers." TIME regrets that it received incomplete information on St. John's curriculum. The college has no courses, however, in contemporary affairs, includes among its 100 classics few 20th-Century scientists.
President Barr quibbles when he says he did not choose St. John's textbooks, since he voluntarily selected a particular list, made additions.--ED.
Communists for Air-Conditioning
Sirs:
I am properly confused. After following the Dies Committee I am completely at sea. LIFE Magazine has shown pictures of Communist Party headquarters in New York, you carried on the cover of one of your issues [TIME, May 30] a picture of the Communist candidate for President, who is presumably a Communist, and I discovered the Communist Party is listed in the telephone book. Is the Communist Party an illegal or underground movement?
If they number 65,000 (TIME'S figure) and control the C.I.O., the A.F. of L., the American League for Peace and Democracy, the unemployed, the PWA, Farley's Post Office, half of the colleges, the Protestant churches, the Federal Theatre and Art Project, the Farmer-Labor Party, Hollywood, the Newspaper Guild, the State Department, I suggest they be used to sell air-conditioning and thus remake this country as did mass production of the automobile.
Sixty-five thousand to 130,000,000 (pop. of U. S.) equals 50 out of 100,000.
DOROTHY HINDS SPEAR
St. Louis, Mo.
"Rates Up"
Sirs:
TIME'S insurance story "Rates Up" in the Oct. 31 issue leaves me a trifle confused. You say ". . . [6%] interest will continue in force, but on all new loans after January 1st the companies will get only 5%. . . ."
What does that actually mean and just how will that affect the policy holders ?
J. J. HAMMEL
Bedford Village, N. Y.
On January 1 a New York State law goes into effect, reducing from 6% to 5% the interest that life insurance companies may charge for policy loans on new policies. TIME failed to make clear that holders of policies issued before January 1, however, will continue to pay 6% on their loans.--ED.
*First: Paul Smyth's, August 8. Last week Mrs. Smyth was on her way out to join her husband on the Arkansas plantation where he has a job.--ED.
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