Of Shame & Slogans Sir: Your article on poverty in America, "A Nation Within a Nation" [May 17], certainly brought home to Americans in a meaningful way the shameful conditions that exist in our nation. Doesn't it seem strange that, after some thirty-five years of political leadership that has given us such slogans as New Deal, Fair Deal, New Frontier, Unfinished Business, Great Society, we should be plagued with such poverty? Doesn't this suggest some kind of a failure in our political leadership and that perhaps we have been mesmerized by Madison Avenue slogans rather than trying to find out the cause of poverty and then eradicating it?

CHARLES P. STETSON Fairfield, Conn.

Sir: The cover speaks 10,000 words. I have never received a message with more appalling force.

ROBIN T. ALLEN

Clearwater, Fla.

Sir: Your excellent photo section and thumbnail sketches of the poor don't deserve the blithe conclusions that go with them. No doubt they were written by the same person who provokes our pity by citing the instance of bags of flour delivered by a misguided welfare agency to "a household that has no oven." Come now, biscuits can be baked anywhere there is a fire to cook with. I have made them: over an open fire wrapped around a green stick, on a flat rock under an old auto fender, on a piep an tilted in front of a fire, under an old dishpan on top of a range, on a piece of foil under a piece of corrugated-tin roof, and the product was eaten with relish by all at hand.

MRS. JOHN ARMSTRONG Palmerton, Pa.

Sir: Since when is this supposed to be Utopia? This is a Republic in which each takes his chances. In return every man, yes, even the black man, has the chance to strive for what he thinks is important to him. Your photographs are very touching. But if you are trying to say that it takes federal doles to clean the junk from the yard, paint the house or wash the kids, or discipline the parents from having too many children, then I don't buy

JACK VASEY Glenview, Ill.

Sir: The youth of today has a big surprise for the world of tomorrow. Because millions of us really care. We are not going to be content with what is going on in Duck Hollow, Ky., or on the shores of Lake Winnecook in Maine. Things will change because we give a damn.

JANE AFTON BARRY, '71 Regis College Weston, Mass.

Listening to the Talk

Sir: The agreement to initiate preliminary peace talks with North Viet Nam [May 10] is conceivably the most constructive achievement of American diplomacy in recent years. It has become increasingly evident that perpetuation of the status quo is untenable. For the incongruence of our increased involvement, upon an ever-diminishing base of rationale, has been unveiled before all eyes. Hopefully both negotiating teams will move swiftly towards an honorable and realistic peace.

DONALD L. CLARKE

Jamaica, N.Y.

Sir: It is interesting that the U.S. considers Warsaw a North Vietnamese ally, but North Viet Nam considers Paris as neutral. This, of course, is the same Pans that the U.S. saved at least twice. Im not sure Moscow wouldn't have been a better site for the U.S. We can at least understand their attitude toward us.

M. ZIMMERMAN

Brookline, Mass.

Sir: How characteristic of the dogmatic, knee-jerk American liberal mind the assertion that delay in starting peace talks costs hundreds of American lives. When peace talks do start, the Communists step up the tempo of war in order to influence negotiations by increasing casualties of their enemies--and are indifferent to the cost in lives of their own men, which will become useless anyhow after peace, when and if it comes. In Korea, more than 12,000 Americans died after peace talks got under way. The French had a similar experience in 1954.

EDGAR H. LEONI

Manhattan

All God's Creatures

Sir: TIME'S Essay "The Age of Effluence" [May 10] suggests that it is time for the clergy to use their power to help clean up the wretched mess man is making of the natural world. Perhaps a reinterpretation of Genesis 1:28 would help to remove the erroneous belief that all animal and plant life belongs to man to exploit, torture and defile. There is not much said in the pulpit about this part of God's creation, or that the earth that man is given dominion over is a sacred responsibility to be loved and cared for, and not a toy for brutish hands to mangle according to childish whims.

SUZANNE M. WATERMAN Setauket, N.Y.

Sir: This is an extremely welcome bit of ammunition for a person who has been trying to teach elements of environmental science for 40 years. Americans (actually, all people) have so much to learn about life and about the earth on which we live and so little time to learn it.

F. J. TREMBLEY Professor of Ecology Lehigh University Bethlehem, Pa.

Sir: I wonder now when you'll come out in favor of the sort of centralized economic planning and regulation which will be necessary to solve the serious problems you describe.

Left to its own devices, Detroit won't phase out the gasoline engine any more than the tobacco industry will phase out the cigarette. Nor is the altruism of the manufacturer going to rid us of the immortal aluminum can, which may outlast the Pyramids." The only way we could accomplish that would be with regulatory legislation, that the industries involved would likely fight with every resource at their command.

JOHN F. HELLEGERS

Manhattan

Sir: Has it not occurred to you that two people make twice as much garbage as one? Steps taken to alleviate pollution will be no more than delaying actions until we do something about a population that already is several times too large.

BRYCE M. HAND

Assistant Professor of Geology Amherst College Amherst, Mass.

Cool Is the Tool

Sir: What the racists in America could not do through murder and intimidation, demonstrators like those at Columbia University [May 10] can accomplish with their misplaced enthusiasm. If our young idealists persist in their intentions to repeatedly immerse themselves in such emotional orgies as occurred at Columbia, they will sabotage the movement to which many claim to be committed, but which some are perhaps merely using as a license for exhibitionism.

I call upon those of my fellow students who are sincerely dedicated to the cause of social justice for all Americans, to sacrifice superficial, emotionally satisfying demonstrations and return to the cool, reasoned approach that characterized our movement under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King. Only by such total dedication can we achieve our ends.

EDMUND MCWILLIAMS JR., '69 University of Rhode Island Kingston

Sir: Who teaches students that force is a valid means of settling disputes? Who teaches them that they need not accept the consequences of their acts? Who tells them that they have the enormous skill and administrative ability needed to run a university? Who teaches them that integrity is an important virtue, then gives them a philosophy that will cost them either their integrity or a bloody, broken bead? And then when all hell breaks loose, who rushes around wearing white armbands, trying to arrange a compromise for the monsters they themselves have created? It is no coincidence that those who initiated the force and violence were mainly students of philosophy, the humanities and social sciences.

GAYLE B. POMRANING San Diego

Sir: The most refreshing remark heard in this day of university presidents meekly compromising with "student power" was that of Dr. Grayson Kirk, president of Columbia University, who when responding to the question, "Aren't the older generation at fault in the generation gap?" said, "Yes, for allowing young people to reach adulthood without respect for law except those that please them." It is sad that we don't have more such administrators to face these insolent youngsters. Parents of such students should let them go to work to support themselves.

JESSIE HART WRIGHT Ann Arbor, Mich.

Sir: Incredible as it may seem, the demands of the Afro-American Student Union at Northwestern University included a request for segregated housing, not, as you report, for desegregated housing. Montgomery, Ala., make room for the Negroes at the back of the bus.

MRS. DONALD VAN LIERE Kalamazoo, Mich.

Long Run or Quick Profit?

Sir: In the article "Trade--Can the U.S. Still Compete?" [May 10], you did not mention one very important reason why imports into the U.S. are rising at such a stupendous pace: shoddily made American products. Not only are imports often much lower in price, but in many cases they are of a quality that is unrivaled by the U.S. We bought a Japanese car that is one of the finest built vehicles I have seen, and gets 31 miles to the gallon of gasoline. This can be repeated in tape recorders, optical goods and many more items. U.S. industry and labor have to sit down and do a lot of soul searching to win the battle of the long run rather than the quick profit.

MARTIN ALBERT Dania, Fla.

Tomato Fancier

Sir: The Cubicar looks, says the London Daily Sketch, "like a motorized greenhouse without the tomatoes" [May 10]. The Sketch critic is blind. The two dolls in the front seat of the Cubicar are as pretty a pair of tomatoes as I've seen displayed in quite a spell.

FRANK SIEVERMAN 3RD

Amarillo, Texas

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Sir: No one can question the proposition that directing the Vienna State Opera is an unenviable job [May 10]. But, if you are to suggest that the job broke the health of Gustav Mahler, let us not neglect to mention his next directorship--which actually killed him--that of the New York Philharmonic.

AVIK GILBOA

President The Gustav Mahler Society

of California Los Angeles

Nan's Man

Sir: I believe that it is fairly well known that Nan Wood Graham was the woman who posed for American Gothic [May 10], but I have always been puzzled about why the identity of the man in this famous painting should be so shrouded in anonymity. He was Dr. B. H. McKeeby, and he was a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, dentist. It is a local Cedar Rapids legend--this being a case where the legend may be the truth--that Grant Wood picked Dr. McKeeby as a model while McKeeby was filling Grant's tooth.

I do recall that Dr. McKeeby was rather sensitive about the painting; so was the whole state of Iowa, although both Dr. McKeeby and Iowa eventually got over that. Even so, in the early 1940s, a good deal of persuasion was required to get Nan Wood Graham and Dr. McKeeby to pose for a photograph with American Gothic in the background, the occasion being the first hanging of the painting at the Cedar Rapids Art Association (Grant had done virtually all of his good early work in or near Cedar Rapids). The persuasion of Dr. McKeeby, who died some years ago, entailed the efforts of a Cedar Rapids Gazette reporter named Dorothy Dougherty, who is now a Cleveland housewife; a photographer named John Reynolds, who is now an assistant to the president of the University of Southern California; and myself.

GENE FARMER Staten Island, N.Y.

Sir: If some people really think that Nan Wood Graham posed for the bikini and topless versions of American Gothic, she should be happy to pay Johnny Carson and Playboy magazine $9,000,000 in appreciation.

G. POST Lubbock, Texas

Dustpan

Sir: In your Letters column, Mrs. Harriette Wagner comments adversely on Linda Le Glair's housekeeping abilities and asks whether Barnard has a home-economics department [May 10]. I have been married for a number of years to a Barnard graduate, whose sister is also a Barnard graduate. Over the years, we have retained friendships with many of my wife's classmates and spent time in their homes.

Therefore, I believe I can answer Mrs. Wagner's question with some assurance. No, there is no Barnard home-economics department.

NEIL N. BERNSTEIN St. Louis

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