Indianapolis Times, Volume 44, Number 108, Indianapolis, Marion County, 14 September 1932 — Page 4

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The Insull Collapse On* Insull holding company is shown to have a "deficit" of $226,000,000 —that figure representing real money which someone once earned and created and Is now gone. The Insull ownership of public utilities was apparently something more than a vast organization created for the purpose of running electric, gas and street railway plants. It extended to the realms of high finance by which the savings of the people, the money of widows and orphans were gathered together and then dissipated. This state is much interested, not only because the Insull companies own many properties in this state, but because for many years the Insull influence has dominated the state government and the legislation of Indiana in regard to utilities. When the people demanded that there be regulation of holding companies owning public utilities, an Insull lobbyist or attorney would carefully explain to the legislators that the Insull holding companies were most innocent organizations, far above suspicion and only formed for the purpose of protecting Investors and not of robbing the public. The Insull lobby for years was the most vicious In the state. Even now It is powerful and appears each year to impress its will upon the laws. In politics, the secret ramifications of the,lnsull Influence have been noted in both parties and especially powerful in the dominant one. No member of the public service commisuion who affronted that powerful machine could hold his job. No one not labeled ‘‘fair,’’ which means something very different than the dictionary definition, could receive an appointment. Receivers for such of the Insull holding companies as are in bankruptcy are discovering the methods by which Insull operated in Chicago. He had a list of 1,600 men of influence in politics and finance. When stocks were to be offered to a gullible public, these politicians and financiers were given the blocks at less than market prices. They got, in plain words, a share of the loot for their aid or their silence. Just how he operated in Indiana does not yet appear. He is in France on a pension. His brother is in Canada. But the machine he created in this state still exists. The people have no control over the holding companies. It will take anew legislature and anew Governor, free from the old influences, to get properprotection. Hoover Economy President, Hoover has performed a public duty, and has echoed popular sentiment as well, by ordering his budget director and his cabinet members to reduce, estimated expenditures of the government for the next fiscal year, and to prepare for complete organization of executive and administrative bureaus. Preparation of the budget is the foundation of fiscal policy, and any real saving in government costs must begin here, in this task for which the President is responsible. Hoover's recognition of this responsibility now is more commendable than a dozen economy messages to congress later. Similar requests for economy have been uttered during other annual budget hearings by President Hoover and by other Presidents, without being followed at the proper time, either by real budgetary savings or real reproof of those who failed to make them. It remaink to be seen whether President Hoover's December budget will reverse this unhappy precedent. Certain parts of his new statement on economy seem to justify alarm rather than confidence. He, for instance, invites his department heads to make the savings he calls for partly, perhaps largely, from construction work, telling them that expenditures for creating employment “will be less necessary” after next June. An economy program based on this sort of reversion to the Pollyanna psychology which has characterized administration thinking during the depression can be nothing but a false front. Prosperity can not return over night. No matter what miracles occur between now and June, unemployment still will exist at that time. Congress will be aware of this fact, whether the President is or not, and will appropriate money for public construction, just as it did last session. If Mr. Hoover presents a budget in December showing savings only In construction items, his ‘ economy” program will be wiped out by congress, and should be. It is discouraging, also, to find President Hoover still ignoring, in his statement, the parts of the government budget where real saving urgently need to be made. Not a word does he say about the two billion dollars spent annually for veterans, a sum which a large portion of congress believes could be reduced. He is silent about the $55,000,000 subsidy handed each year by the government to steamship and aviation companies. In spite of the obvious attitude of the country toward prohibition, he says nothing about reducing the $45,000,000 which that piece of hypocrisy costs us annually. Congressional committees found last winter that the government might save from $50,000,000 to $100,000,000 annually by consolidating certain activities of war and navy departments, and it gave President Hoover authority to make these consolidations at once, but he has not acted. Economy can not be achieved merely by talk. Official Murder Spain we are apt to think of as a violent and bloody country, which enjoys a gory sport and uses direct methods to rid itself of both royalty and established religion. Yet Spain has adopted anew constitution which abolishes capital punishment. And this country of ours, which worships the idea of effecting change through ballots instead of bullets, still indulges throughout much of its territory in the most uncivilized of modern practices—official, cold-blooded taking of human life. Spain's decision on capital punishment aligns her With twenty-two other countries of Europe and Latin American which have abandoned the medieval concept. that the example of official murder somehow may prevent private murder. In this country, eight states have rejected this outworn folly. Probably, if the United States were confronted with the need of framing new fundamental laws, with thinking out the problems which habit and tradition too often are allowed to solve, she would realize that the experiment of these eight states conclusively has demonstrated the futility of state killing. The homicide rate in twenty-six states which retain capital punishment was $.3 per 100,090 popula-

The Indianapolis Times (A •CFirri-HOWAHU NEWSPAPER) Owned and published dally (except Sunday) by Tba Indianapolis Times Publlahln* Cos„ 214-220 West Maryland street, Indianapolis, Ind. Price in Marion County. 2 centa a copy; elsewhere, 3 cents—delivered by carrier, 12 cents a week. Mail subscription rates in Indiana. $3 a year; outside of Indiana. R 5 centa a month. BOID GURLBT. ' BO IW. EARL D. BAKER _ Editor President Business Manager PHONE—RIIey 5351 WEDNEBDAY, SEPT. 14, 1933 Member of United Press, gcripps-Howard Newspaper Alliance, Newspaper Enterprise Association, Newspaper Information Service and Audit Bureau of Circulation^ “Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way.”

tlon during a recent ten-year period. In six states where there is no capital punishment, the rate was 3.6 per cent. Nor can these figures be discredited by geographic considerations, for Michigan and Rhode Island, both industrial centers with heavy urban population, are included in the states which do not kill, as well as others with more rural population. With the excuse of crime deterrence taken away, capital punishment is without Justification of any kind. What Price Censorship The Rev. Robert Shuler of Los Angeies for several years has broadcast over his church radio weekly sermons that for bitterness and invective recalled the witch-burning polemics of old Cotton Mather. Because he was careless of personal reputations, and because his charges were not always accurate, he was adjudged by the good people of Los Angeles a public nuisance. They applied to the federal radio commission to revoke his radio permit. At that time this newspaper warned against such a course. We said that, much as we disliked this type of citizen, he was entitled to be heard; furthermore, if he were suppressed, his martyrdom would endow him with greater power. i The radio commission, however, took away his permit. Now California realizes the mistake of that action. Shuler was a candidate at the recent primaries for the United States senate. He ran on the Republican, Democratic and Prohibition tickets. When the votes were counted, it was found that Shuler had polled nearly 100.000 more votes in all than those of either Senator Shortridge or William Gibbs McAdoo. He will be on the November ballot as prohibition nominee, and if he runs as he did in the primaries, he will win the senatorship. Thus again is proved in a modern setting the old, old adage, “The blood of martyrs is the seed of rebellion.” Shuler should have been given every opportunity to say his say, unhampered except by slander laws. Scientific Theories The layman wax bewildered when the Einstein theory of relativity took the center of the intellectual stage shortly after the World war. Gradually his bewilderment gave way to resignation. He didn’t quite know what the scientists meant by curved space, a united space-time and other details of the theory, but he was -willing to believe that they were so if the world's leading scientists said so. In time, however, by reading the more popular pronouncements of Eddington, Jeans, Millikan and others, he formed a reasonably good picture of anew universe, with its peculiarities of expanding space, variable time, and matter that could be transformed into energy. From such books as Jeans’ “Mysterious Universe,” he even began to acquire anew philosophy based upon these ideas. The present year, therefore, is likely to appear to the average layman as even more bewildering than 1919. It is likely that 1932 will go down in history as the year that scientists changed their minds. Early in the year, Einstein and his colleague, De Sitter, announced that maybe space wasn’t expanding after all. At any rate, they said, there was nothing in the theory to indicate whether it was or not. The other day, as David Dietz reports from the meeting of the International Astronomical Union at Cambridge, Mass., sir Arthur Eddington said that he was certain that the universe was expanding, but that it was not nearly so old as has been supposed during the last decade. He cut the age of the universe from fifteen trillion years to ten billion years, a more drastic drop than even the stock market took. Eddington goes a step farther and says that while the universe appears to be expanding, maybe, after all, it isn t. The same effect, he says, would be achieved if space was stationary and everything in the universe, including our sun, our earth and everything on it, was shrinking. This notion of a universal shrinkage may contain some crumb of comfort for those whose securities shrank during the last year or two. But putting all banter aside, what lesson is the layman to learn from 1932? Perhaps the most important one is to regard scientific theories in the same light that the scientist himself does. The scientist does not regard Einstein's relativity or Eddington's theory or any other theory as final. He merely regards them as the best conclusions at the moment from the available facts. He expects to change these conclusions as new facts come to light. The layman who reads science must learn to be quick on his mental feet.

Just Every Day Sense By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

TWO blond and two brunet waves is the record of John Gilbert, great screen lover," chirrups a moving picture magazine, According to these popular publications, the liveliest form of barter and trade now going on is in husbands and wives. The Hollywood area is especially active in this respect. It seems to me that the marital entanglements of the stars offer the most depressing and degenerate aspect of modern American life. Those trying to reform the scenarios well might turn their attention for a time to the screen magazines, whose readers are regaled each month with lurid tales of love and divorce. The old Police Gazette was a credit to some of these dispensers of dirt. Yet we could pass them by carelessly if we did not realize that millions of girls regard with the utmost admirafton the stars whose antics form the gist of their copy. The ambition of many a 15-year-old is to be a second Constance Bennett. For this reason the conduct of Hollywood s population hardly can be disregarded. It is deadly serious 10 half-childish minds. n m s SO serious is this, in fact, that we can not estimate the damage such publicity can do. Bald announcements of casual divorce and casual marriage, joking references to slipshod morals and unstable love read like the reports from the underworld. The pages teem with salacious references. And do not these men and women of screen fame, who have been given so much wealth, so much adulation. owe something to the public? Is it too much to ask them to set better examples of decent living to our young people? I think not. We expect all other great industries to uphold standards of honor. Why exact less from Hollywood? The moving picture stars have been treated generously by the public. We demand that they reciprocate. As American citizens, they must share in the tremendous responsibility for the future of American morals.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

|M. E. Tracy 1 -Says: ~

Common Sense Suggests That the Vote Result in Maine Is Sympathetic of the General Drift. NEW YORK, Sept. 14.—Four years ago, the Republican candidate for Governor of Maine received a majority of 83,000. Two years ago, he received one of only IiuOOO. This year finds him defeated. Not only a surprising, but progressive, change of sentiment has taken place in Maine. Since local issues played very little part in this year's election, it is fair to i assume that the change was due to national issues. It does not follow necessarily that the people of other states have altered their attitude in like proportion, but common sense suggests that the result in Maine is symptomatic of a general drift. all events, that is the way politicians are interpreting it. As Senator Moses says, “No thoughtful Republican can overlook the implications of yesterday's election in Maine, nor can they be, explained aw’ay by the customary forms of political alibi.” n u n Same Old War Cry This is the first time Maine has gone Democratic in a presidential year since 1880. It also is the first time that the wets have won anything like a complete victory since Main® went prohibition in 1884. Mr. Hoover and the eighteenth amendment must be credited with having wrought little less than a miracle. Why imagine that Maine is the only state affected? Republican managers seek con-' solation in no such specious fancy. Their only hope is that Maine may have shocked the nation and thus 1 saved it from Roosevelt and Garner. Republican managers still are going on the theory that terrible things are in store for the good old U. s. A. if their party is not retained in power. What is even more ridiculous, they are going on the theory that they can make some 20,000,000 impoverished farmers, unemployed laborers, and hard-pressed business men believe it. Just how things could be much worse than they have been is hard to see, but Republicans are so used to promising disaster if they should lose that they can’t think of any other battle cry. nun More Grief for Hoover Meanwhile, results at the American Legion convention seem likely to turn out as unfavorably for the Hoover administration as those in Maine, if, the convention fails to pass a resolution of censure, it will be out of respect for the government, rather than in obedience to sentiment. The blast against the bonus marchers has proved a boomerang. If General Glassford is ousted as head of the Washington police department because he denied Attor-ney-General Mitchell’s charges of crime and Communism among the bonus marchers, it only will add fuel to the fire. At the aarne time it would be a perfectly logical climax to the course of useless blundering which the Hoover administration has pursued. nun Sidesteps and Straddles WHETHER you take prohibition, hard times, treatment of the bonus marchers, the tariff, farm relief, Muscle Shoals, or the St. Lawrence treaty as an issue, you will find that the Hoover administration has delayed, sidestepped, or straddled just as long as it could and then did something stupid. No one holds it responsible for the depression, or the eighteenth amendment. No one blames it for the failure of European governments to pay their debts, or for the shrinkage of domestic revenue. The people were in a mood to excuse it as innocent of many of their misfortunes. What they could not and can not excuse is its failure to take remedial action in a prompt, straightforward way. Most of the things it finally did could have been done long before. Most of the measures it adopted under pressure could have been adopted sooner and voluntarily. What irks most people is its childish disposition to dilly-dally and then do something on half-baked impulse, or in a huff.

JF T ?s9£ Y ; WORLD WAR \ ANNIVERSARY AMERICANS PUSH FORWARD Sept. 14 ON Sept. 14, 1918, American troops north of St. Mihiel repulsed heavy German counterattacks and pushed on for an additional gain of from two to three miles on a 35-mile front. Guns from the fortress of Metz were brought into action by the Germans in an effort to stop the American advance, which was threatening the railroad used as a feeder for the German armies in northern France. British forces resumed the offensive near St. Quentin and captured the village of Maissemy and adjoining positions in a day of hard fighting. French troops continued their drive, taking the plateau east of Vauxaillon and the ridge northwest of Celles-sur-Aisne. The government of Austria Hungary invited all belligerent nations to enter into nonbinding discussions, with a view to ending the war. When and where does the electoral college meet? It does not meet as a body, but the electors meet in their respective states and cast ballots, which are transmitted to the President of the United States senate, who, in the presence of the senate and the house of representatives, opens and counts them. What are the duties of the presi-dent-emeritus of an institution? The office is honorary, and sometimes is accorded to those who have retired from active participation in an organization after years of service. It does not carry any duties. unless specially provided for in the by-laws or constitution.

Who Said Two Heads Are Better Than One?

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DAILY HEALTH SERVICE i Genius May Have Touch of Insanity

BY DR. MORRIS FISHBEIN Editor Journal of the American Medical Association and of Hygfcia, the Health Magazine. LOMBROSO, famous Italian criminologist, set up the theory that ail men of genius are either actually or potentially insane. He compiled a list of noted men of distinction who became insane or who were in some degree obnormal. Among the list are Nietzsche, Rousseau, the poets Southey and Cowper, the composers Schumann and Gounod and Edgar Allen Poe. Lombroso also listed many geniuses who had borderland defects. In a recent review of the subject, Prof. W. B. Pillsbury listed many men of great distinction who had speech defects. Among those listed as stammerers were Demosthenes, Aesop, Aristotle, Virgil, Erasmus, Charles Lamb, Darwin, and Charles V. Lombroso also listed a great many people who were left-handed, but there is still some question as to whether any one, except a lefthanded baseball pitcher, is to be considered abnormal.

IT SEEMS TO ME by-™

I .AM decidedly a belated bandwagon jumper in setting down a few timid and awkward words in praise of Samuel Seabury. Within the last twenty-four hears I was informed by two scouts that in newsreel theaters the picture of James J. Walker was greeted in silence, while the countenance of Seabury aroused cheers and thunders of approbation. I was surprised at this information. A long shot has come home. An entry against which a thousand to one justly might have been quoted has won by a nose. And nose is used advisedly, for Mr. Seabury has been assigned these many months to the role of inquiring counseilor-at-law. Whatever hopes might have been pinned to his legal findings, there seemed at the outset not the slightest chance that anybody would like him when his day was done. The task was thankless. After all Samuel Seabury was asked to play the ogre in conflict with a lithe and charming Jack-in-the-Bean-stalk. nun For Once the Ogre Wins THIS duel between a stern, frowning, and forbidding inquisitor and a gilded playboy seemed in the beginning a complete setup. A year ago I would have said that the plodding and humorless Seabury had not a chance in the world to eclipse James J. Walker. But he has done so. Give a man enough epigrams and he may not hang himself, but in the long run he will turn up rather neatly trussed in his own wisecracks. And so it was with Walker. Any dictaphone record of Walker’s appearance at the hearing would suggest a complete triumph for him. He was too quick for Seabury. He moved around his cumbersome adversary like a cooper putting the last touches upon a barrel. The laughs were for Walker. His were the cheers and the headlines. But Samuel Seabury still kept wading in, although his nose was both bowed and bloody and his ears

Your Questions Answered You can get an answer to any answerable question of fact or information by writing to Frederick M. Kejby, Question Editor, Indianapolis Times Washington Bureau, 1322 New York avenue, Washington, enclosing 3 cents in coin or postage stamps for 'reply. Medical and legal advice can not be given, nor can extended research be made. All other questions will receive a personal reply. All letters are confidential. You are cordially invited to make use of this free service as often as you please. Let our Washington Bureau help with your problems.

The great philosopher Schopenhauer had pathologic fears and delusions of grandeur, as did also the Russian novelist, Gogol. Os course, much depends on one’s definition of what constitutes genius or talent, and also on the definition of insanity. A careful study of the subject would seem to indicate that an occasional man of great ability may have been insane, but under such circumstances he probably is competent in spite of his abnormality rather than because of it . The philosophers may be omitted immediately from the category of insanity; their philosophies may have attracted attention because they were different rather than because of any extraordinary genius shown in the conceptions. Some of the great leaders of the past believed that their work was due to the fact that some higher power within them merely was using their voice. This was the reflection of the ancient belief in habitation of the body by spirits and demons. The modern phychologist Kretschmer believes that talent and capacity are

had been carried away by the brilliant aggression of his opponent. Mr. Seabury seems to stand in the same relationship to the legal profession that Battling Nelson once possessed in the fight game. Neither one was equipped with a punch sufficient to end matters in short compass, and both were suckers for a fast left jab. But Battling Nelson and Sedulous Sam had the great gift of stamina. They could bore in and keep on coming, even when hailstones big as Block beneficences rattled upon their temples. There were times when Seabury seemed to be no more than a stooge for our alert and articulate Walker. Any accurate transcript of the first duel between the pedestrian interrogator and his brilliant quarry would have been studded with parentheses marking “laughter and applause.” . James J. Walker won every skirmish. He lost nothing but the major engagement. I suppose one of Mr. Seabury’s great gifts* is his lack of humor. When Walker shot a fast one across

People’s Voice

Editor Times—We have had occasion to be halted on the roads in the vicinity of Indianapolis from two to four times a day by a couple of non-uniformed men, apparently taking data for somebody, under the name of the “United States traffic survey." The law of Indiana sets out specifically that no one, in an official capacity or any other capacity, has the authority to stop a car on a highway of Indiana without having a uniform or credentials stating from where they received their authority, so that the responsibility of their actions can be traced to someone higher up. Voters of the nation in general, as well as the writer, have been fed up on bureaucrats and worthless political jobs paid for by the public and it is the height of impudence on the part of the bureaucrat who has detailed these hirelings out on the road in violation of state law. If tljese several parties must be on the state pay roll for political or other reasons, why not let them join the post listed as “janitors” or flunkies around the statehouse, and not annoy people who are trying to earn an honest dollar without being subsidized by anybody. It is costing some farmer about forty bushels of oats or fourteen bushels of corn or a hundred-pound hog for each one of these worthless parasites every day that he stands on the road annoying the public. BERT WILHELM. Vice-President Property Owners Protective Association, Inc.

necessary if a man is to be successful, but that a slight touch of insanity is necessary to raise him out of the many who also are successful, if he is to be really distinguished. An analysis made of the life of the great German leader Goethe shows that he passed througn periods of excitement at regular intervals of seven years. Each of these periods was marked by a great fervor for writing poetry or dramatic works, and a marked propensity to fall in love. Between periods he was subject to hypochondria and piety. Under modern classification, this would be called a cyclothymic mental disorder. It also has been called circular insanity. Professor Pillsbury feels that genius represents a desirable departure from the normal and insanity an undesirable departure from the normal. It can not be denied that some forms of genius may be related to insanity, but there are so many factors in genius besides insanity that mental abnormality can not be given the credit for being the basis of genius.

Ideals and opinions expressed in this column are those of one of America’s most interesting: writers and are pre- . sented without regard to their agreement or disagreement with the editorial attitude of this paper.—The Editor.

the corner, the judge stood silent and sincerely puzzled. And probably he thought to himself, “What in the world is there to laugh at?” * u At the Eleventh Hour AND in the long run, Samuel Seabury turned out to be right. In leaping from point to point, James J. Walker was as agile as Eliza crossing the ice. But he could not distance forever a bloodhound who just kept nosing along. Mr. Seabury is a strange man in our metropolitan community. He proved himself a Cromwell come to judgment. He was the essence of the roundhead cause. The gallantry, the showmanship, and the charm of the quarry meant nothing to him. By a strange accident, he happened to be a man with a real “concern,” as the Quakers term it, for the dictates of decency and honesty in office. Long before the investigation had ended, it became the fashion for people to say: “Os course, I hold no brief for Jimmy, but this Seabury is a pain in the neck, as far as I am concerned,” But Samuel Seabury moved along with a divine indifference to what men and politicians might think of him. He inched along in hobnailed boots. Ido not suppose that even the very best friends of the investigator would accuse him of bristling with charm. Tammany’s few defeats have been accomplished in the past by men like Williams Travers Jerome, who could dramatize graft and fit local | blemishes into some smashing third- j act climax. Mr. Seabury could not do this. j At any rate, he didn't. He crept j up upon the tiger, moving along ungracefully upon his stomach. It was not showy in the least, but merely effective. n n Work of Good Technician WALKER could sit in the witness box and laughingly exclaim: “Never touched me!” It was not until he tried to turn his head that he discovered that all the important arteries had been severed. For a dinner, a dance, or an aftertheater supper Jimmy still is your man and mine. But the old Puritan has down him down, for all that, in the finish fight. PerhPTS in the end even Walter may acknowledge his debt to his griifi-visaged adversary. Again and again Walker cried out to all the world that he wanted to have his private life left out of the proceedings. He starred himself as one who had no such privilege because of politics and persecution. Now the wish has come home to roost. When Walker has cooled off a little during the restful months to j come, he should look up Sedulous Sam and say to him: “Much obliged.” After all, if Walker once again has a private life, he has no j one to thank for it but Mr. Seabury.; (Copyright 19J3. by The Times)

J3EPT. 14,1932

SCIENCE BY DAVID DIETZ

New Types of Grains and. Cotton, Gross and Sugar Cane Produced by Experiments in Plant Breeding. HOW experiments In plant breeding have produced new types ’ of corn, wheat, sugar cane, cotton, grass, clover, fruits and flowers were ! described recently by Dr. A. F. ; Woods, director of scientific work of the United States department of agriculture. The new plants have been the result of application of scientific methods to agriculture and of anew point of view upon the part of scientists interested in the subject of botany. “The old botany was largely the naturalists’ interest in the orders, species and varieties of plants as they occurred in nature." he said. “Plants as well as animals everywhere were considered as fixed entities that might vary a little under changing conditions of environment, but always remained within the fixed bounds in which they were created. “This viewpoint has been changed as the result of research. We still have the families and species, but they are more or less plastic In the hands of the geneticist. "We have learned that the hereditary characters are carried in the chromosomes of the germ plasm nucleus and that these chromosomes are made up of smaller bodies not much larger or more complex than some of our chemical molecules. “We have learned that these have a definite relation to each other in the chromosome and that this definite relation controls the form and activity of the individual resulting from the egg cell. “Regrouping ran be produced bv crossing or hybridization or can be brought about by other means, such as certain forms of radiation, thus producing mutations in enormous numbers from which selections mav be made.” M U The New Botany COLD and drought - resistant wheats and alfalfas, wiltresistant cottons, cowpeas, flax, melons, sugar canes, resistant to virus diseases, potatoes resistant to these and other diseases, are among the new production, Dr. Woods said. “The plant breeders constantly are improving, developing, and adjusting crop plants to various limiting factors and quality requirements,” he said. Important investigations also are being conducted into other fields of botany. He continued: “We long have realized how fundamentally important plant liife is to the existence of animal life. We know that plants are able to combine carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen into forms available to animals. They do this with energy absorbed from sunlight. “We have known a little of these products of photosynthesis, starch, sugar cellulose, pectin, organic acids, and a host of other organic products about which we know very little. “Recently our investigators have opened anew field in the so-called vitamins that are found to have extremely important relations to animal development. They control growth and reproduction, resistance to many diseases in animals and man. Almost every jear our investigators are bringing new aspects of these important matters to light. Then there are other light relations that only recently have been discovered, for example, the relation of periodicity of light exposure to the development of plants. ‘ln nature tliis is regulated by the seasons and by day and night. We have developed some control of resting periods and growth, but flowering and fruiting in the majority of cases could not be controlled until one of our scientists discovered that y changing the length of exposure to light and darkness he could period 6 thC flowering and Suiting “T 1 *? is Paving to be a most SJW* control in bringing plants to bloom at a desired period, either for commercial or research purposes. It is anew field in which there is research yet to be done.” nun Plant Diseases O ne of the most important ad-V-P vances which science has made m the field of agriculture has been m the attack upon plant diseases. Dr. Woods says: , “Anew science, phytopathology, has been developed in our efforts to cope with these diseases. The first progress along control lines was in the use of fungicides. The United States department of agriculture and the experiment stations have led the world in this development. The same is true in regard to insect pests. The warfare grows more Intense every year. The increasing ease of communication between hitherto Isolated regions has made it possible for many fungus and insect parasites to move to cultivated plants related to their wild hosts. “With the improved food conditions they multiply enormously and become major pests. Plant lice, leaf-hoppers, grasshoppers, crickets, pocato beetles, are all well-known examples of those that have moved from wild to cultivated plants. “The cotton boll weevil, the pink boll worm, the Japanese and Asiatic beetles, the corn borers, the Mediterranean fruit fly, and others too numerous to mention, are some that have been brought in. “Here, free from their enemies, they have become a serious men xe to our agriculture. “Most of them can not be eradicated, so the best that we can do is to import their enemies, when those enemies are not likely to be injurious, and also to develop other means of supression and control.

Daily Thoughts

For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.—Psalms 84:10. Oratory is the power to talk people out of their sober and natural opinions.—Chatfield. Name the United States commissioner of education? William John Cooper.