NovaVib

Wheels Across Panama

Sirs:

Is it true what you say about no wheel ever having rolled between North and South America (TIME, July 6)?

I cannot contradict you with the crispness many cocksure letter-writers manage to achieve, but I have a faint recollection. . . .

One day in 1927 or 1928, while I was chronicling the not-too-breath-taking affairs of the Isthmus on noisy Nelson Rounsevell’s Panama American, there came to Panama City two Spanish boys in a battered Studebaker touring car. The chassis of the machine was set high on the axles, it had no mudguards, and it looked to be capable of negotiating even a jungle cart trail. On the side flapped a dusty banner proclaiming its destination as “New York, America, U. S. A.” At that time no motor road crossed the Isthmus from Panama City (southeast) to Colon (northwest). The Panama Railroad hurdled huge Gatun Lake on a trestle, planes soared from side to side, but the motor road existed only in blueprints. We turned out for the two boys and their rut-jumping car—we hoisted them on to the railroad trestle with one wheel just outside the tracks, and the other inside and they bumped off with rubber bits in their mouths to prevent the sharp jerks from causing self-inflicted bites. Yes, they bumped off, presumably to take the Eastern Beach Trail that starts on the Atlantic side, above Colon. Whether they got where they were going or not, I don’t know. Or I wouldn’t know why they did it either. Perhaps their only destiny was to provide me with a one and only chance to contradict TIME.

FRED C. COLE American Type Founders Elizabeth, N. J.

Right is onetime Reporter Cole’s recollection. On Jan. 11, 1927 an Italian named Jose Mario Barone left Rio de Janeiro with a companion in a 1922 Studebaker touring car which had already gone 124,000 miles, drove to Buenos Aires, hacked his way north through the Bolivian jungle, crossed the Isthmus, reached New York City March 1. 1929. The 20,000-mile trip was largely financed by giving exhibition “Leaps of Death” in the car. Barone’s first companion was killed in a race soon after their start. His second, picked up en route, died of jungle fever. His third lost his life when an avalanche hit the car. Once Barone was robbed by bandits who took everything but his car, which they considered worthless. It is now in the Studebaker Museum at South Bend, Ind.

However. TIME was technically right, too, when it said that no wheel had ever rolled between North and South America. In impassable Central America Barone’s journey was broken by three water hauls, the longest of which (210 miles) was from Colombia to Panama.’—ED.

Croppers & Critics

Sirs: I am getting distinctly fatigued with all the furor, perpetrated by the well-meaning uninformed and the less altruistic, dues-collecting labor agitators, about the sad plight of the ill-fed, downtrodden sharecropper [TIME, June 29]. Aside from exceptional and infrequent disastrous years of severe drought, floods and the like (and this merely goes to prove the rule), a farmer cannot be starved to death on the ground. Having been reared on a plantation, I know that the majority of tenants absolutely will not raise a garden on the plot always provided free of charge unless the landlord, in the tenant’s own interest, compels it. The Southern climate permits the growing of greenstuffs nine or ten months in the year—and the county agricultural agents and demonstrators are hired expressly to teach those willing to learn to preserve the fruits (which grow wild), vegetables and meats. Poultry can forage for itself and there is a plethora of fish and small game. And don’t you believe there isn’t ample time to garden, hunt and fish! I have myself lived in a house scarcely better-built than the shack pictured in TIME. It was a four-room box, tar-paper-roofed, and you could throw a cat through the cracks in the walls. We whitewashed it, papered it ourselves, and by the time my mother, a very frail woman, had planted simple flowers, the wretched place looked rather charming. Except for actual ploughing, we raised a garden and fed ourselves entirely save for sugar, salt, coffee, and wheat flour. During the War, we did without flour and cane sugar! And we lived exceedingly well. Perhaps TIME doesn’t know that R. E. Lee Wilson, who became the largest individual producer of cotton in the world, began life as a sharecropper, and that a Negro—Pickens Black of Auvergne, Ark.—has acquired several thousand acres of land by his own effort. His son bought an airplane last year! Of course the tenant system has its abuses and abusers. So has everything else. But for the thrifty, there is no more independent means of life nor certain mode of economic advancement.

PERCY S. WOODS St. Louis, Mo.

For news of another landlord whose farm tenants will not provide for themselves, see p. 56.—ED.

Sirs:

TIME, June 29, word-pictures a ”plump Willie Sue Blagden, Memphis socialite and social worker.” To any discerning person the accompanying photographic version by Pictures Inc. is damaging to your efforts.

May I venture, after having spent the past four years in Memphis at Southwestern, Willie is probably no ”socialite.”

Memphis ”socialites” don’t get steamed up over sharecropper problems. Public issues and manner of ideas are highly distasteful to most of them.

Memphis “socialites” have been at least tutored if not bred to the better tradtion of southern manners. None would disport her thick, blackened thigh to Pictures Inc.

HARVEY B. HEIDELBERG JR. Jackson, Miss.

. . . My family have been landowners here in Arkansas for generations, and they cope with the present tenant system of farming the best they can: giving the tenants and sharecroppers weekly orders at community grocery stores during the winter months when gardens are impos-sible, paying doctor bills for the sick, burying the dead, as well as bailing [offenders] out of ail when necessary. These are a few items hat the social agitators prefer to leave unmentioned in their “demonstrations for the poor.” . . . Miss Blagden may or may not have been a paid social agitator, but that her sole purpose in coming to another State was to hold funeral over a mythical Negro’s body is absurd. … I doubt very much if she actually received from “the huskiest of the six” any blows from a mule’s belly-strap. However, whether she did or not, I am only wondering why four strokes from a mule’s belly-strap in Arkansas is so much more noticeable and so much more terrible than the dozens of blows from a policeman’s billy in other strike areas of the country?

LADY ELIZABETH SCHARNBERG Newport, Ark.

KDKA

LABOR ARTICLE JULY 6 ISSUE INACCURATE REGARDING RADIO STATION IN GRANT BUILDING. KDKA IS IN GRANT BUILDING BUT IS WESTINGHOUSE-OWNED AND NBC-OPERATED.

H. A. WOODMAN General Manager KDKA Pittsburgh, Pa.

Groceteria

Sirs: The following will correct the impression given by your article pp. 54 and 56, TIME, July 6, that Grocer Saunders of Memphis was the first in the “Self Serve” type of grocery. The fact is that Lutey Bros., Grocers, Butte, Mont., originated and operated under this plan from February 1912. This was four years before the advent of the Saunders Stores. Mr. Saunders adopted this idea very successfully, after learning about its results with Lutey Bros., Butte. This innovation in grocery retailing by Lutey Bros, was commented upon by trade journals— The American Grocer, New York, devoted several pages in quoting a descriptive booklet, “Cutting Out the Frills,” issued by Lutey Bros, when opening their first store of this type. Registry was applied for in 1912 and issued May 27, 1913 by the Patent Office (Nos. 91780, 91782) on the coined words used by Lutey Bros. —”Marketeria” and ”Groceteria.” WM. J. LUTEY

Lutey Brokerage Co. Seattle, Wash.

Worldling; 40 m.p.h.

Sirs:

Many warmest thanks for the copy of July 6 TIME containing the review of my article in Science, June 26, pp. 621, 622. The speed is quite astonishing and the reviewer has done a masterly job. He knows the subject well and has precisely caught my exact meaning.

But why, oh why the “aging worldling.” That I am “aging” I woefully admit. I look as vigorous and “well set up” as ever. But I know I have not the reserve force I had nor do I “take punishment” and come up for more, as I once did.

But an utterly selfish materialistic old “worldling!” Surely not I.

ALAN S. HAWKESWORTH

Fellow Royal Society of Arts Washington, D. C.

By “worldling” TIME meant that Scientist Hawkesworth, like all astronomers, was earth-bound in his observations of the universe, not that he was personally selfish or materialistic.—ED.

Sirs:

On p. 34 of TIME, July 6, Philosopher Hawkesworth states as an imaginary problem— ‘A man . . . driving . . . along Pennsylvania Avenue at 40 m.p.h.,” etc. Philosopher Hawkesworth protests that celestial problems cannot be solved by terrestrial reasoning, but “a man driving along Pennsylvania Avenue at 40 m.p.h.” is the very problem that Washington has to face, and the death rate proves that only by clear terrestrial common sense can the celestial problem be solved for over 100 people a year.

A. JEREMIAH ETIENNE Washington, D. C.

Contract Compromise

Under the heading, “Wrong Righted,” TIME, July 6, your conclusion that the settlement out of court of the $9,000,000 damage suits for cancelation of airmail contracts was a tacit admission on the part of the Government ”that its 1934 action had been wrongful is wholly unjustified and appears to be an intentional distortion of the relations between the parties involved.

The fact that the $600,000 paid was for services rendered by the carriers prior to the cancelation of their contracts; the fact that the carriers withdrew their claims for damages in toto; the fact that the Government paid not one cent in reparation for the cancelation; the fact that nearly 20 top men of the airline companies had to be summarily ousted before the Government would consider proposals for new airmail contracts; and the fact that the canceled contracts were not reinstated, but new contracts were placed on a strictly competitive basis in accordance with the law; are conclusive evidence of the justice of the Government’s position, and of the unfair, political bias of your conclusion.

GEORGE M. STRATTON Port Huron, Mich.

Drawing no conclusion as to the larger aspects of the airmail cancellation case, TIME said: “The Government . . . thus tacitly admitted that, in part at least, its 1934 action had been wrongful and un-warranted.” Rather than risk its whole case in the courts, the Government, on the Attorney General’s recommendation, compromised with the airlines for sums earned but withheld for two years, decided not to make good its threat of criminally prosecuting the airlines.—ED.

She Cox

All Rollins is proud of Sally Stearns (TIME, June 22), who coxswained our varsity crew when it beat Manhattan College on the Harlem. The first girl coxswain that ever steered an intercollegiate race won her “R” by sheer merit and not by way of a publicity stunt. For three years she never missed a clay at the crew house, substituting for male coxswains whenever they didn’t show up. Last year she was the best coxswain available, but the coach and Athletic Committee feared ridicule from “turned-up-nosed” males if she was permitted to participate in what had always been considered a masculine sport. This year she was so much better than any male competitor that imaginative common sense prevailed.

Even so, the College Publicity Office feared to release the news, and it only leaked out a week after the victory.

Thus, again, woman scores another victory. . . .

HAMILTON HOLT President Rollins College Winter Park, Fla.

Conventions

The picture of the Mississippi delegation to the Philadelphia Party (TIME, July 6) is amusing. But how could anyone accumulate so much fat in three years? Could it possibly have been grafted from a pork barrel?

J. WOLTER St. Louis, Mo.

Sirs:

Please discontinue sending TIME. . . . you should be neutral and not sling mud as you did about Republican Convention TIME, June 22 . . . That is little.

MRS. JOHN W. LUTY Bourbon, Ind.

Sirs:

. . . The writer was a Delegate to the Democratic National Convention at Philadelphia. I hold no public job of any kind and did not go to Philadelphia to get one. . . .

During all of my time in Philadelphia I never at any time saw the slightest misconduct on the part of any delegate from Texas or any other State. The trouble with some of the ultra-conservatives up your way is that if a man makes a little noise he is drunk. You do not seem to understand the psychology of having a good time otherwise. . . . It is my understanding that there were 100,000 visitors in Philadelphia and that many of them were Republicans as well as Democrats. . . .

You have picked out the Al Smith incident in the galleries that none of the delegates knew anything about. You have noticed the drunks in a certain hotel and very readily given the Democratic National Convention credit for this delinquency. I am just wondering if you realize that Philadelphia is a Republican town. . . .

W. CLEVELAND RATLIFF Attorney at Law Cooper, Tex.

Did you have Charles Michelson write your article on the Republican National Convention? As a cover-to-cover reader since your first issue, this is the first time I have really been irritated.

AUSTIN P. STORY Chillicothe, Ohio

. . . “Soon the lobby of the Bellevue-Stratford and the stairs down to its bar were strewn with Democrats so deep in their cups that they could not reach their seats in Convention Hall. On the basis of liquor consumed, the Republican Convention in Cleveland seemed, by contrast, with the Democratic one in Philadelphia, to be a meeting of the W. C. T. U.” (TIME, July 6).

Those same are the people whom you are being governed by, that make and enforce laws which regulate your daily lives. They are spending over two of your dollars for every one the Government receives as income and they are doing it to perpetuate themselves.

In 1932 I voted for Mr. Roosevelt. I realize my error in the light of broken promises, idiotic legislation and disregarded traditions. . . . In 1936 I will not vote for Mr. Roosevelt. . . .

WM. F. DOWDALL St. Louis, Mo.

TIME, July 6, states that Lily Pons sang the Star-Spangled Banner at the late Democratic Convention. Not, apparently, so. Miss Kitty Carlisle sang it—from a perch four floors above her invisible accompanist. I saw Miss Carlisle the following evening, and she told me so herself. Doubt her, I wouldn’t.

HAMILTON W. WRIGHT Hempstead, L. I.

TIME stated that Lily Pons sang the Star-Spangled Banner, not at the Convention but at the acceptance ceremonies in Franklin Field.—ED.

“Armchair Critic”

Sirs’

Your weekly onslaught against the British Empire is really quite amusing, and I am writing to suggest that you change the name of your paper to the “Armchair Critic.”. . .

J. DOBSON Gwelo, South Africa

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