Indianapolis Times, Volume 45, Number 58, Indianapolis, Marion County, 18 July 1933 — Page 10

PAGE 10

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Oir> lA'jht and the People Will Find Their Oven Way

TUESDAY. JULY 1. 1933

OVERPAID EXECUTIVES r T' v HE appeal of Joseph Eastman, federal ■*- co-ordinator of transportation, urging the rail bosses to cut their high salaries should be taken to heart by all overpriced American business executives. “This country,” he said, “has been and still is suffering to a degree that it never has suffered before. Millions are out of work. Still more millions are living on a pittance. “Thousands of railroad employes have no Jobs at all and thousands more are working on part time. Thousands of investors in rail securities are receiving no return.” A few railroad presidents like Daniel Willard of the B. & O. voluntarily have reduced their salaries. Others still draw annually SIOO,OOO and more. In the meantime, rail labor continues to accept the 10 per cent wage cut for another year. ' The truism that American recovery depends on greatly increasing mass buying power can not be repeated too often. This means much higher wages for those at work and shorter hours to absorb the jobless. Workers’ incomes increased only 7 per cent between March and May, while factory production increased 35.6 per cent, an unhealthy and dangerous gap. Workers’ buying power sitll is 56 7 per cent below that of 1929. Yet many executives in utility, insurance and industrial fields are getting salaries even larger than in 1929. Some get salaries of more than $200,000 a year, plus bonuses. Wise executives will forego these fancy salaries and help to redistribute wealth downward among the masses, where it will increase the sale of goods and services. As Mr. Eastman told the rail chiefs:'“The executives will have much more to gain by such an adjustment than they possibly can

WANTED: INSPIRATION /"VVER in Washington, Republican Chairman Everett Sanders, House Republican Leader Bertrand Snell, and other more or less distinguished professional politicians are throwing cold water on President Roosevelt’s plans and endeavors, in hope of putting life into the Republican party. Accordingly, Senator David A. Reed of Pennsylvania, the most partisanly corrupt state on earth, will foregather in California, two weeks hence, with Herbert Hoover, Later, evidently, something will go to boiling in the party pot. Obviously, the injection of new vim, vigor, and vitality into the Republican party requires super-brain work and invention, so few are the perquisites and principles which that party can appropriate to itself in particular; and, it really has had very little experience as the party merely “against.” There are no spoils for the Republican hungry, and, unless there is a cataclysmic debacle in Roosevelt’s plans, there aren’t likely to be any Republican spoils for almost eight years to come. At Chicago, in 1860, the Republican party gave to American political history, as one of its birthday presents, a strong declaration for protection, “which,” it said, “secures to the working men liberal wages, to agriculture remunerative prices, to mechanics and manufacturers an adequate reward for their skill, labor, and enterprise and to the nation commercial prosperity and independence.” It surely will strain Messrs. Reed and Hoover to work up inspiration to revivify virility in their party with a joke like that. TWO STORIES IN New York there is a skyscraper which was once the show place of Manhattan —the Woolworth building. At the time it was built many a moral was drawn about the homely old virtue of saving your pennies and nickels and dimes. "Look at that building. Rollo; it was built from nickels and dimes"—and Rollo. of course, was presumed to be strongly impressed and Imbued with the old-fashioned ambition to make little things count. * * • THE founder of the Woolworth business is dead. The building no longer is the tallest in New York. But the great fortune which it exemplified and the business which created it go on. And within the last few weeks, there have been two stories about this business—one in far-off Paris, and one in Pittsburgh. The stories are interesting, because —like the Woolworth building—they exemplify something. Just as the building was once a symbol of the power of nickels and dimes, so are these two stories a symbol of conditions from which the United States has been suffering. ? ... r T''HE first story has to do with the mar- ► riage, in Paris, of Miss Barbara Hutton, one of the two richest young women in the United States. Her fortune has been variously estimated: twenty millions is presumably a safe minimum. She inherited it from the founder of the Woolworth business. And recently she attracted world-wide attention by marrying Prince Alexis Mdivani, one of the dispossessed heirs to certain estates in Georgia. Georgia, even before the Russian revolution, was one of the poorest spots of that vast empire—a barren, sheep-raising territory. The Mdivani princes—there are three of them—distinguished themselves, however, by contracting marriages with rich women. There was comment over the fact that Miss Hutton took precautions to Insure the continued control of her fortune, although she was reported to have made a handsome marriage settlement on the bridegroom. And so goes the story of the impoverished

nobleman from an obscure sheep country In southern Russia, with only an empty title and no funds,, who married the rich American girl and received a large settlement. All on the basis of nickels and dimes. • • • A ND now the scene shifts to Pittsburgh, *-where the second story developed. Girl employes of the 5-and-10-cent stores from which the Woolworth fortune was built appeared before the legislative committee Investigating sweatshops, and charged that they were paid $4.50 for a forty-hour week and $6.50 for a sixty-hour week. On the following day, H. L. Johnson, assistant manager of the Woolworth stores of that district, appeared and denied the testimony. Sales girls are paid an average of $9 to $lO weekly, he said, and the minimum pay in Pittsburgh is $750. “We pay our employes a $5 bonus every Christmas, and each gets two weeks’ vacation without pay,” Mr. Johnson testified. “And the company pays the hospital bills of needy employes, if they can not pay themselves.” * * * A ND so, out of these two stories, there is exemplified the vast inequality in the distribution of wealth. One girl, with millions, contracting a marriage with a “prince” of nonexisting estates; thousands of girls working for a few dollars a week to keep the fortune going. And yet the Woolworth company, as brought out In the testimony, was not a particularly flagrant violator of pay standards. Many companies paying far less were brought into the testimony. Woolworth pays, as do other companies, according to accepted standards. And accepted standards in such businesses rapidly have sunk to the stage where they mean mere subsistence. The country in which one girl gets unearned millions and millions of girls get hardearned pittances never can have real prosperity. There can be no sound business in the United States until unemployed millions get jobs, and jobs pay enough money so that their holders can purchase the products of industry.

SAFE FROM AIR INVASION / T'HE successful completion of General Italo Balbo’s flight across the North Atlantic with twenty-four seaplanes proves that aviation has made great and that the open ocean no longer is an effective barrier to competent and determined airmen. But it does not prove that the United States would be in any great danger of aerial raids if it should get into war with a European foe. Stripped for action, given every help possible and permitted to take all the time they needed, these twenty-four planes got to Labrador unharmed. But if they had been planes on a bombing mission, they would have had a good deal farther to fly, before reaching their objective, they would have had to carry heavy loads of bombs, and they would have had to plan on flying back without stopping to refuel. Flying the Atlantic in peacetime is one thing; conducting a wartime bombing raid is something entirely different.

DANGER FROM TOP A MONG the minor interesting news items the day is the report that the tomb of Attila, famous many' centuries ago as the “scourge of God.” has been found in a river bed in Czechoslovakia. Whether the report is correct or not. the story at least performs the useful function of setting one thinking about the contrasting ways in which civilized society can be threatened with destruction. In Attila’s day, when the Huns came rolling up out of the eastern darkness, the crumbling society of the time lived in fear of invasion by barbarians. Wave after wave of savage destroyers came in over the eastern borders, each one more destructive than the one before. Attila w r as the last and worst. The whole framework of civilization seemed to be collapsing before him. Tt took society centuries to pick up the pieces. When the historian, Gibbon, wrote his ‘‘Decline and Fall,” he remarked that society no longer faced that kind of danger. The framework, he said, never could crumble again. There were no more barbaric hosts to menace the frontiers. And a few years after he had written that came the French revolution, just to prove that society could be threatened with destruction, even when its frontiers were completely peaceful. Destruction that time came from the bottom instead of from the outside, and it left reverberations quite as profound as those that Attila's host put in motion. Today we have no barbaric hordes on the borders, and—in spite of the shivers of the timid—we are not in any real danger of an uprising from below. The threat that our society faces is entirely new, and because, it is so new it is all the more insidious. It comes from the top. Our danger is not that we shall be overwhelmed by external enemies or turned over by the downtrodden masses. It is that our order of things may collapse of its own weight, because the men at the top have set up an establishment that they can’t quite master. What is going on at Washington now is simply an attempt to rearrange things to make intelligent direction of our society more easy. It may look radical at first glance, but it is essentially deeply conservative. We have neither an Attila nor a Robespierre to fear; if trouble comes, it will be entirely our own fault. “United States treasury says dollar bill will last nine months.”—News item. That may be true, but such never has been our experience. Attorneys for a New York banker seeking to clear him of criminal charges on grounds of insanity, probably are counting heavily on their disclosure that he paid income taxes.

IF GOVERNMENT STOPPED TTHE public services of government, for all the criticisms that legitimately may be leveled against them. are. by and large, the things that give to American civilization such stability and meaning as it has in this singularly unstable and doubtful time. So says Dr. Glenn Frank, president of the University of Wisconsin, in a recent discussion upon constructive versus destructive economy in government. Dr. Frank still speaking: “There undoubtedly is waste, duplication, and instances of the obsolete in public service. It is the business of statesmanship ruthlessly to discover and ruthlessly to do away with such wasteful, duplicating, and obsolete services. "But great statesmanship will perform these surgical operations upon government without joining the blind reductionists who, in pleading for elimination of waste, are throwing public suspicion upon the whole public service.” In a late issue of Scribner’s magazine, the clear-headed Charles A. Beard painted a vivid picture of what would happen if the socalled ’’bureaucracy” should quit functioning for even one day. Water would cease to flow from faucets. Sewer pumps would stop. Guiides to navigation on the seas and in the air would be cut off. Epidemics would spread with death-deal-ing swiftness. Millions of school children would roam the streets. Criminals and lunatics would break from their cells. Thousands of sick in hospitals would go uncared for. Publicly operated charities would close. There would be no bureau of mines or coast guard service or supervisiion of airways to protect lives on land and sea and in air. There would be no forest service to conserve and guard the national forest domain. American agriculture would have its access to modern science blocked and the American farmer would have to begin the trek back to the days of rule and thumb. There would be no public health service. There would be no fire departments to protect property. There would be no Reed commissions to block the advance of yellow fever, with the sacrifice of their own bodies. It behooves us to think twice before we throw our hats in the air every time a flippant cartoonist depicts public servants as swilling swine at the public trough. We shall do well to examine carefully the ax which many forces want to swing at public services, in order to be sure that it is not a private ax waiting to be ground. History well may look back upon men who, in the midst of this economic crisis, lost their heads in a lurid onslaught against public services as the real anarchists, although many of them come from the ranks of the most conservative men of the time.

Skating teachers and portrait painters are much alike. Both allow their patrons a generous number of sittings. Sales of beer in Oklahoma, legal now for the first time in twenty-six years of statehood, are said to be exceeding all expectations. Apparently, the “Sooner State” fast is becoming the “Schooner State.” Engineers have developed air conditioning to the point where it now cools thousands of homes and business places. However, it probably is too much to expect that science ever can eliminate hot air from political speeches. United States weather bureau reports that midwest has been dryer this summer than at any time in last three years. But you’d never guess it from reading the reports of the vote on prohibition repeal. We haven’t yet heard the details of that strike called by microphone technicians at a Hollywood studio, but doubtless there were sound reasons behind it.

M.E.TracySays:

SOME things never change. One of them is the value which men attach to gold. Governments may stay on or go off the gold standard, but as long as the precious metal remains as scarce as it is, it will be sought after and hoarded. Nor should the love of gold be attributed entirely to scarceness. The peculiar properties of this metal have had quite a bit to do with its general acceptance as a standard of value. It glitters, won't corrode, is comparatively indestructible and heavy. A cubic foot of gold weighs nearly one ton and is worth much more, but you can't work or handle diamonds the way you can gold. The value of diamonds depends on size and shape. Break a big one in pieces, and you lose a fortune. Gold dust, how’ever. is worth as much as a gold nugget of the same weight. tt tt tt SINCE civilization began, gold has been good for meat and drink, with or without a government stamp. As far as we can see, it will continue to be good. Even if men have to give it up to the government, they will get money or bonds in exchange. Considering all that has been said about making such natural resources as oil, gas, and timber public property, it is surprising that no one has suggested a similar rule with regard to gold. The fact that finders are recognized as keepers goes far toward accounting for the eagerness with w r hich men seek it, on one hand, and the little that has been done in a public way to promote its discovery or regulate its exploitation, on the other. While the handling of gold has become a matter of world-wide organization and governmental control, searching it out still is left to that rugged individualism which we regard as outmoded in most other fields. tt tt tt THE other day, an old Negro prospector struck pay dirt on a Colorado mountainside near the Royal Gorge. It was a bleak, isolated locality, thirty-five miles from the nearest railroad station and without so much as a good w-agon road. In the space of weeks, however, it swarmed with miners, prospectors, promoters and tenderfeet. Some came to stake out claims and dig. Others came to make money by feeding and entertaining them. Still others came to trick them out of their spoils. Curiously enough, the first row occurred over naming the new’ town. One faction was for calling it “Hoardville,” in honor of its discoverer. Robert Hoard. Another advocated "New Deal,' 'in honor of the Roosevelt administration. After more or less argument, they compromised on “Copper Gulch." "Copper Gulch” may be descriptive of the region, but it seeems rather inappropriate for a gold mining town. Like many a more important compromise, it was accepted because it was sufficiently colorless not to offend any one. That reveals another very old trait of human nature. From time immemorable men have found it necessary to agree on some innocuous name or scheme to keep peace, which explains whv so many of their agreements mean so little. a

THE INDIANAPOLIS TMES

(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns. Hake your letters short, so all can have a chance. Limit them to 250 words or less.) By Motorist. When Police Chief Mike Morrissey stopped the semaphore traffic system on downtown streets, Indianapolis made its bid to become a cosmopolitan city. In recent years, the semaphores have proved to be a poor substitute for handling the traffic situation. Unlike most larger cities, Indianapolis kept this antiquated system when better methods easily could have been adopted. The semaphores proved to be a perpetual confusion to visiting motorists, especially at corners w’here Virginia, Kentucky, Massachusetts and Indiana avenues branch out. Oftentimes strangers motoring in the city hesitated to proceeed, fearing the “go” sign was not intended for the avenues. Pedestrians often became confused on these intersections, due to uncertainty of the traffic movement. All larger cities long since have abandoned the semaphore systems for more swift methods. Perhaps, soon, traffic on Indianapolis’ main thoroughfares will be directed as it is in larger cities, with traffic lines proceeding for several blocks at a time, instead of being forced to halt at each intersection by the stop signal. Persons from other cities say this system is superior in handling of heavy traffic. Perhaps city officials soon will see the wisdom of adopting the system to facilitate the latest improvement. By C. S. G. The Times has done an admirable piece of work in exposing conditions at the state penal farm, but sympathy for 90 per cent of the gentry who land on the farm is wasted. While the public should condemn the “methods” used at the farm, it should not be led into any maudlin sentiment for the inmates. I venture to say there are two sides to the stories told to The Times by these inmates; for, first of all. the average inmate of these institutions is a perfect liar; even affidavits do not balk him, for he

This is the first of three articles on typhoid fever. IF the case rates and death rates for typhoid fever that existed in 1890 prevailed today, the city of Chicago would have this year 60,000 cases of typhoid fever and approximately 6,000 deaths. Instead, Chicago has had in recent years fewer than 200 cases and seldom as many as ten deaths. Thus it is shown w’hat a tremendous benefit modern preventive medicine has come to be for mankind. In an earlier day the family doctor claimed that he could “smell” typhoid fever. His guess was likely to be accurate, since one cut of five seriously sick people was likely to have typhoid. There w r as a time when any doctor definitely could calculate on his financial returns from typhoid fever, and they usually were suffi-

XT THEN I read the sincere opinW ion of high-minded men and women who saw the World war at first hand—and only the residents of other nations really did that— I feel a flowering of hope and joy in my heart, because *not one of them but has learned to speak the truth about it. I wish, therefore, that all American women could read the last little book by Storm Jameson. Englishwoman. called “No Time Like the Present.” This woman had her life shorn of hope and dreams by the catastrophe of 1914. And the war became for her a ruthless monster, swallowing her schoolmates, her her relatives, and left her world stripped bare of all noble, worthwhile things—a drab, bare, bankrupt world—with victory nohire. t

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The Message Center

I wholly disapprove of what you say and will defend to the death your right to say it. —Voltaire

Typhoid Curbed by Preventive Medicine =-- —== BY DR. MORRIS FISHBEIN

A Woman’s Viewpoint - 'BY MRS. WALTER FERGUSON—-

Storm Over Dixie

State Managers? BY D. Yaver. THERE are campaign pledges and there also are campaign pledges, but there are those weakkneed babies who raved and ranted about Roosevelt’s inability to keep any of his campaign promises? It occurred to me that The Times was of very liberal extraction. What a splendid opportunity to exploit our President's accom- • plishments! Do you think Norman Thomas could have gone further or done even as well? What a blessing on the people of Indiana if we had as capable and efficient a state administration as we are receiving from Washington. Is it possible that our Governor hasn’t as many professional associates in the Legion as he deems fit to rally round his cabinet? Take a poll of the state today and you will find that Paul McNutt has driven more voters back into the Republican fold than can be credited to any ingenuity of the greedy Republicans. I make the prediction that as quickly as President Roosevelt has his industrial recovery program working to his entire satisfaction, the next step he will take will be a recommendation of complete reorganization of state units. Individual initiative and state rights be hanged. They have been sorely abused and used merely as a ruse to cover greed, selfishness, and political racketeering. Revamp the Constitution and allow Roosevelt to appoint business managers for every state, whether Democrat, Republican. Socialist or Communist is of no concern. In one year or less the poor public would be relieved of our political racketeers and real, lasting prosperity would be so simple that it would be humorous to compare with the administration as we now are getting. I wonder if it ever occurred to the internal revenue office to check up on our politicians the same as they did A1 Capone? will lie as quickly in an affidavit as he will in general conversation. Perhaps ninety-nine out of 100 of these farm inmates are either

Editor Journal of the American Medical Association of Hvgeia. the Health Magazine. dent to send his children to college. Typhoid fever is an acute infection caused by a germ known as the typhoid bacillus. The germ can be found in the blood of a person seriously ill with the disease, and in 80 per cent of the cases is found in the excretions. The germ is spread by means of the excretions, by soiled food and clothing, particularly by contaminated water and milk, and to a large extent by people who carry the disease; that is to say, they themselves have been sick and have recovered, but they still carry in their bodies germs which may infect other people. Formerly typhoid fever occurred from the use of ice made from w’ater in polluted streams. Today nearly all ice is made artificially from

Her fear and indignation, her sorrow and pain, are real. For ink she has used some of the blood from her own heart. I quote one paragraph only. • nun “T FEEL bitter anger against womJ- en who accept war. I wonder that it has taken so many tnousands of years to realize that war is not more an historical necessity than witch burnings. We have outgrown one. and could, if so minded, outgrow the other. “I am as helpless as any other common woman. But I can assert my individual will. And so I do. If this country, I say. is got into another great war, I shall take every means in my power to keep my son out of it. I shall tell him that it is nastier and more shameful to volunteer for gas bombing than to run from it. I shall teach him that

subnormal or abnormal, many congenital defectives, vicious, lawless and irresponsible because they can not be anything else. Drunken auto drivers, chicken thieves. • purse snatchers, shoplifters, annoyers of children and other such violators of the law can not help showing their characteristics any more than a decent, moral, intelligent, lawabiding citizen can help showing his characteristics. It is a matter of innateness—an inborn quality, not measured or even concerned with material things. Shakespeare knew’ these differences in people when he said in effect: You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. That is why socalled “reform” institutions are failures. The “mine run” of persons sent to these institutions can not be reformed. On the other hand, normal persons never have to be reformed in the usual accepted sense of the word. Not one out of ten thousand is reformed by prisons. Many are deterred from further crime indulgance by fear of punishment or loss of liberty—but you can't make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Prison farm routine should be made rigorous and the inmates made to feel the heavy hand at all times. That does not mean cruel or inhuman treatment, but it should mean life without any of its feathers or furbelows, and even chastisement when necessary. Figuratively speaking, the prison rod has been spared too much and too long. The Times has done w’ell to point out penal farm abuses, usually from the hands of guards who are not much higher in the scale than those under them. My protest, however, is against creating any mushy sentiment for the usual jetsam washed up at these institutions. Outside of abnormal cruelty, these birds deserve all they get. Daily Thought Ye eat the fat, and ye Clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed: But )e feed not the flock. Ezekiel 34:4. THE virtues are lost in self-inter-est, as rivers in the sea.—Rochefoucauld.

clean water and there is no danger of typhoid. Milk used to be a common source of typhoid germs; and milk pioducts were also knowm on occasions to carry the germs Once the eating of infected oysters was a prominent cause, because the oy*,ers were developed in contaminated water. Now the control of oyster breeding largely has eliminated this source of contagion. Formerly it was thought flies were more responsible for spreading typhoid fever than any other cause, but today it is not believed that transmission by flies is an important item. However, the fly does feed filthily and may transmit any condition associated with the filth on which it feeds. Next—The symptoms of typhoid fever.

war is not worth its cost, nor does it result in victory.” If enough women with ner courage could say that and stick to their conviction, weTiould eliminate war. Think of it! Think of the power we hold!, Think of what we could do if we put our minds to it and keep our determination film. The intelligent people of the earth must rebel again war. To permit themselves to be driven to that level of savagery is to submit u the ultimate tyranny. Then, if the stubborn and stupid will battle, let them have at each other, and the sooner they eliminate themselves, the better. If one must be shot, it is better and nobler to die for nigh principles than to kill others and yourself, for a cause in which you do not believe, and because somebody orders you to do so.

_JULY 18, 1933

It Seems to Me - BY HEYWOOD BROUN ■=

NEW YORK. July 18—Rudyard Kipling touched upon an interesting point in his recent luncheon address to the Canadian Authors' Association. I wish he had developed it a little more fully. “We who use words enjoy a peculiar privilege over our follows.” he said. "We can not tell a lie. however much we may wish to do so. We only, of educated men and women, can not tell a lie—in our working hours —but the more aspects we pick, the more certainly do we betray any truth concerning our own age." I think that what Mr. Kipling said can not be accepted without the support of a few footnotes It seems to me that his major contention as to the fundamental truthfulness of any sort of self-ex-pression is accurate. Writers do not lie, but they may report many things which are not so. Truth resides in a little cottage in West Infinity, just next door to the house occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Parallel Line. None of us ever has known or ever will know the truth in its entiretv ana No Vacancies I THINK that Mr. Kipling might have drawn a map for his listeners and have indicated the boundaries of that great middle kingdom of which most of us are subject. We do not lie much, and yet we never tell the truth. We tell the truth as we see It. And that, of course, Is not precisely the real thing. Rudyard Kipling himself seems to me an excellent ease in point. He is one of the most honest observers living in the world today, and he has celebrated the pomp and glory of many things which are tragically false. He believed these things. That is why it is tragic. Upon several occasions I have hazarded the guess that Kipling will penetrate further into posterity than many of his contemporaries who are wiser. The mind of Kipling is no more than a grain of wheat if you set it beside the brain of Bernard Shaw". But it is distinctly possible that your great-grandchildren and my own will be more interested in "The Man Who Would Be King” than in “Man and Superman.” Shaw has dealt with ideas which are fragile things and transient. Kipling has built his literary fame upon the solid rock of episode.

It Can't Be Faked PEOPLE who quarrel bitterly with Kipling's notions about Nordic supremacy and imperialism and major generals sometimes forget that there is nothing synthetic about his point of view. I do not think that he ever said to himself, “This is an attitude which should be popular and sell a million copies.” No one ever has done that successfully. Once upon a time I knew a man who wrote voluminously for the more sensational magazines. His conscience troubled him, and he would moan about being a hack and w’eep because he had prostituted his talent. Naturally we became friends, and he revealed a secret After the rent was assured and enough had come in to pay the grocer's bill, he labored on a masterpiece. “Os course,” he told me. “nobody ever will buy this book. It is too stark, too bitter and too scarifying.” And he let me read it He called it Jetsam.” I imagine that the editors who bought his wares might have objected to this title, and someone of them probably would have suggested that the title be changed to. ’The Lady Who Couldn’t Say No.’ ” tt tt tt Really Minor Matter AND in fairness to my friend, 1 will admit that he well might have had to face the objection: "I think that in the last chapter you might make one small change. You remember where Bill jumps over the cliff and is dashed to pieces on the rocks below? Have him just about to jump, but before he can leap, Eileen rushes out of the jungle and cries, ‘No, no! I loved you all the time!’” Aside from those two minor alterations, there wasn’t an idea or a phrase or an episode which would not have fitted perfectly into what poor Tom K. (he died last year) referret to as his potboilers. I don’t know w f hether Rudyard Kipling intended to include columnists in his quota of those “who use words,” but his doctrine is comforting. We, too, eat pottage wdthout the payment of any birthright. Hot or cold, the fare we offer, whether we know it or not, is the best w r e can provide. (Corn-right. 1933. bv The Time*)

Procrastinator

BY MARGARET E. BRUNER He always meant to write a book some day, But many things conspired to cause delay. <A story written in his college days Had brought words of encourage- „ ment and praise. > He wore the look of one whose mind was cast With specters of unwritten tales that passed Like taunting demons surging through his brain, But he lacked time; this fact he made quite plain. And yet of evenings with the lights turned low He sat till midnight at the radio, And seldom did he miss a football game, But still he coveted a writer's fame. He liked baseball, was something of a fan; On pleasure, it appeared, he placed no ban. But there were times when he seemed sore perplexed— Was irritable, cross, and easily vexed. Perhaps it angered him to know that he Had listened to procrastination's plea. A kindly man, and yet a thwarted soul, Who saw. but failed to reach the final goal. The book remains unwritten at this date. For, somehow, time could not be coaxed to wait.