Pointed Gaze
Sir:
Is there any significance in having Mr. Dubinsky [TIME, Aug. 29] looking smilingly southward from your cover's clothes compass? Perhaps that region of the country could use some of his admirable talents for doing such a mammoth job in so streamlined and painless a fashion.
WILLIAM R. SHIELDS
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Classical Crib?
Sir:
Re your Aug. 22 issue: "[Elizabeth Taylor's] complexion has been described by an ecstatic publicity man as 'a bowl of cream with a rose floating in it.' " Please compare . . . Elegy on Cynthia of Sextus Propertius: "Lilies would not surpass my mistress for whiteness; 'tis as though maeotic snows were to strive with Spanish vermillion, or rose leaves floated amid stainless milk (utque rosae puro lacte natant folia)." Please remember Propertius lived circa 24 B.C., and besides, Cynthia, we are told, had yellow hair and black eyes. Could she have been the ecstatic publicity man's prototype?
LAWRENCE A. APPLETON
San Jose, Calif.
Tariff Toll
Sir:
. . . I am not a well-informed student of international trade, but it seems to me that Britain's inability to earn dollars is at least partly the result of our tariffs . . . While the suspension of tariffs would by no means balance the British budget, it would give British products a better chance to sell, and, conceivably, give Britain more of a chance to earn what she spends. Therefore I think it unjustified to omit our tariff system when discussing the causes of Britain's economic situation.
JUERGEN M. SCHULZ
Berkeley, Calif.
Sir:
Your article on the British economic crisis [TIME, Aug. 29] practically ignores the U.S. tariff as a cause of Britain's dollar hunger. How much importance should be attached to it, and what are the facts? I wish to buy an English overcoat this fall. If I pay $100, how much of it will go to our Government as tariff ? How much will stay with the American merchant as profit? How much will get back to England?
K. D. BATTLE Rocky Mount, N.C.
P: Reader Battle's typical coat is divided roughly three ways: tariff charges are about $18.50, U.S. traders (who bear the costs of handling & merchandising) get $31.50. The remaining $50 goes to the English manufacturer, who can then pay his bills for imported wool and dye.--ED.
Due Credit
Sir:
TIME [Sept. 5] failed to credit famous Artist Will Shuster for our fiesta's Zozobra. [He] has made it annually for a quarter-century.
MRS. ROARK BRADFORD
Santa Fe, N. Mex.
True-Type Magazines
Sir:
In your article [TIME, Aug. 22] on romance comic magazines and their unusually good sales, you say: "The trend was so terrific that some of the old-style confession magazines confessed that they were in trouble." Presumably the trouble referred to was financial trouble, inasmuch as you quote from my midyear letter to our stockholders which reported a loss in the second quarter of 1949 of $11,635, after showing a profit in the first quarter of $224,883.
What you failed to include, perhaps inadvertently, was the paragraph in my letter explaining that this loss was due to two large, non-recurring items of expense totaling about $200,000. Without these our profit for the first six-months period, in spite of the slump and heavy returns, would have exceeded that of the previous year.
During the second quarter, the circulation of our True Story Women's Group, which contains all of our truetype magazines, exceeded the advertising guarantee of 5,150,000 by a substantial margin. This guarantee increases with the October issue to 5,250,000 copies.
During the summer months (August issues over June issues), sales of our True Story Women's Group have increased 211,000 copies.
In closing, I want to state positively and without any reservations that this company is in the best financial condition of its long history.
O. J. ELDER
President
Macfadden Publications, Inc.
New York City
Skid Row Then & Now
Sir:
Speaking of the effectiveness of newspaper exposes of Chicago's "Skid Row" [TIME, Aug. 29]: in 1915 I did a lot of combing of that same Skid Row in Chicago, as legman for Henry Hyde, the Chicago Tribune's pioneer front-page columnist. Just about everything you report having been uncovered by the recent Daily News series, we wrote about then . . . Now, just what things are needed besides thorough and interesting exposes to achieve anything except tongue-in-cheek police "cleanups?"
Today, as one of five elected officials responsible for all public welfare work for a population of four million (Los Angeles County), I find our local Skid Row almost as bad as Chicago's. Nearly one-half of all our arrests are for drunkenness; many of these men, now classed as bums, are arrested scores of times a year--to what end? We have sponsored a duplicate of Yale's Alcoholic Clinic at the University of California at Los Angeles for three successive years [and] in desperation are calling on . . . medical science, social experts and religious agencies for some effective means of solving or ameliorating a social and economic situation whose capacity to keep on producing human scums and bums seems undiminished.
JOHN ANSON FORD
Supervisor
Third District
County of Los Angeles
Los Angeles, Calif.
Giveaways
Sir:
The recent to-do about the ban on giveaway shows [TIME, Aug. 29] is of particular interest to the average good old American.
I don't think I am qualified to judge whether or not these radio programs are good or bad, but it does seem to me that they are typically American and . . . have done some good. Take myself for instance:
Last December my wife and I had finally found a suitable apartment in a nice neighborhood to raise our children in. But we still had to buy furniture for the apartment . . . We went to a broadcast one night--Winner Take All. I was chosen as one of the contestants. I answered the questions first and right, and I won the one thing we needed to get us started on the road to furnishing our new home, a seven-piece bedroom suite.
At a time when things looked pretty dark this wonderful thing happened . . . So I say, let the FCC ask the radio audience what they think, and I'll bet there won't be any doubt but what "Giveaways" are here to stay.
G. J. NELSON
Chief Yeoman, U.S. Navy
New York City
Sir:
At least, on the giveaway radio programs you have to answer the questions first, before getting a deep-freeze locker. In Washington, they question you afterwards [see below].
F. LANDER MOORMAN
Douglas, Ga.
Fast Rise
Sir:
TIME Aug. 15 states that John Maragon "continued to live like a little shot in a lower-middle-brow home in McLean, Va." TIME Sept. 5 finds him "in a middle-brow house in the suburbs."
Does this meteoric three-week rise from lower middle brow up to middle brow make him a middle shot?
EVERETT J. OLINDER
Falls Church, Va.
P: Mr. Maragon's house, like his business activities, underwent some reassessment .--ED .
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.