Indianapolis Times, Volume 47, Number 32, Indianapolis, Marion County, 17 April 1935 — Page 15

It Seems to Me HEnOOD BROUN THE books I mean to read Rome day are in the crate, the van is Just around the comer and almost any morning now I’m saying farewell to New York City after 45 years of comradeship. You may object that something has been shaved away from the age. but I'm merely leaving out the primary year which was spent wholly in Brooklyn. It is not a news note of vast Importance. I will grant, that one more city chap is heading back to the soil. From now on at soma well remembered bar there will be room for two or three where

formerly one lolled. Perhaps for a week or so somebody may say, “Whatever became of that man Broun?" Failing to obtain an answer the question will be dropped and not come up again. When a minn<*- breaks away from the swarm the school continues to function in the usual fashion. The boys in the back room will talk their plays and novels into the empty air and never notice that a fellow smoke writer has moved on and left an empty chair. Digging up your roots after an

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Heywood !roun

approximate half century is Just a little bit like dying From a remote New England hillside I may almost have the privilege of searching for my own obituary notes. They will be. I fear, too scant and wooden to afford much satisfaction. • • • First Fire Years the Hardest AND frankly I fear the nights during the first five or six years of the exile. By day there will be the exacting and exciting duties in the vegetable patch. The chickens must be fed and watered. or whatever it is that one does to them, and there has even been some talk about a cow which can cause no end of trouble. Since this is to be a self-sustaining farm, part of the day must go toward fishing in order to provide provender for the evening meal. Naturally this will be supplemented by wild berries from the meadows back cf the lake and if the cherry tree is to amount to anything it will need a lot of early pruning. Fortunately the general store is only two miles away and in the beginning, at any rate, I will feel the need of some filling station capable of providing the latest gossip. Arcadia, which will do as well as any other name for the community of my five acres, can be reached from the town by rail or stage coach, but few make the Journev. The farmer Just across the road has not been to New York since McKinley’s first administration. Having reached a decision I mean to abide by it. There’s no break worth while except a clean one. And so I say that for the first few years the nights may find me restless. I’ll think of shows along Broadway, of Twenty-One, and Blake’s and late supper in the Stork Club. But at such times I need only go a few feet from the door to stand beneath a giant maple and listen to the wind ’among the leaves. That should furnish music fully as fetching as any cabaret miss singing, “Stay as Sweet as You Are.’’ At least I hope so. Os course, if you don’t like the cabaret you can go to another. I’ll have to stick to the same old maple. * * Good Resolutions BUT what the hell! If I hold to the resolution of making 9 o'clock my bedtime the nights can’t be so very long. And there's nothing quite so refreshing as a good plunge into a cold lake at 6 in the morning. Up our way it doesn't freeze over until late December and even then it is generally possible to break the ice. The more I think of it the more I wonder why I put off this alliance with the natural life for so many years. Sitting up until 4 and 5 and sometimes 6 in the morning at poker wasn't really fun. It was just a vicious habit. In a year or two I’ll be able to repay most my losses and forget about it. And it isn’t as if this were an expedition to the coast of Labrador. After all the morning papers from New York arrive regularly a little after luncheon. And on the radio it is quite possible to get the more powerful stations. Some 15 or 20 miles over Trinity Pass there's a couple that play pretty good contract even though they never have learned to score. They'll be useful in the long winter evenings on such nights as it is passible to get through the drifts. Naturally I'm going to keep up with my work. Why not? William Allen White makes his home in Emporia and Ed Howe turned out plenty of copy from Potato Hill. They tell me that as soon as I get used to it the country air should bring back the roses into the faded cheeks of this column. According to my advisers it ought to become more human and more mellow. “Just think of all the time you’ll have to work on It," they Ml me. And maybe that is what I’m thinking about. Perhaps I can get something off for good behavior. I could still use one day a year in the big city. (CoDvrtffht, 1935*

Your Health -BY DR. MORRIS FISHBEIN-

THERE is perhaps no better way to celebrate May day than to give thought to the children of the United States, especially with regard to prevention of diphtheria. May 1 has been named by health authc. ies for this particular purpose. We know aiough now about diphtheria to eliminate the disease, if all the persons in this country would do their utmost in aiding the application of modern medical knowledge. We do not know the cause of diphtheria, but we have in addition an antitoxin which, given early and in sufficient amount, will cure the disease in the vast majority of cases. Moreover, a skin test is known which shows whether a child exposed to diphtheria will come down with the disease. a a a FINALLY, we have a method of preventing diphtheria, involving use of a single injection of a substance called diphtheria toxid. The modern alum precipitated toxid is a very potent substance which does not produce reactions in children, and which will, after a single injection, make the vast majority of children capable of resisting infection with this disease. Diphtheria is an inflammation of the throat in the vast majority of cases. It appears as a grayishwhite patch. When a doctor sees this characteristic appearance, he takes a swab or a culture from the throat. The germs are examined under the miscroscope and an attempt is made to grow the germs on an artificial medium to make certain that the condition is diphtheria. m a a THE disease is such a menace, however, that the doctor does not hesitate to give the antitoxin even before the results of the examination of the material taken from the throat are available. Effective treatment of diphtheria demands immediate action. Antitoxin given within the first two days of the disease almost invariably cures the patient, whereas delay may result in some of the secondary complications of diphtheria which are serious and in some instances fatal. These secondary complications are particularly the effects on the heart and paralysis of the throat and of other parts of the body. Children everywhere should be immunized against diphtheria. In fact, the immunization may be done after the child is 6 months old.

Questions and Answers

Q—To whom and when was Grace Moore married? A—She married Valentine Par era In July, 1931. Q—How much reserve iron ore is there in the world? A—Conservative estimates by economic geologists Indicate that there are now about 30 billion tons of iron ore in reserve, which at the present rate of annual consumption of 100 to 125 million tons, should last about 200 years.

Foil Leaced Wire Service of the United Presa Asaociatlon

TVA—THE TEST TUBE OF SOCIETY

Economy of Abundance Starts at Grass Roots, U. S. Insists

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BY TALCOTT POWELL Editor of The Times 'J'HE Tennessee Valley Authority plan for an economy of abundance starts literally at the grassroots. Land, says the TVA, is the one natural resource that the United States has which can not be exhausted, providing 1 it has proper care. All the food that America eats comes from the land and 30 per cent of the raw material going into this country's manufactured goods springs from agriculture. The waters of the Tennessee River once were clear. Today they are unspeakably filthy. The mud which makes this river dirty is not merely an offense to the esthetic sense but represents an enormous dollars and cents loss. Take the case of Howard Morgan, whose family has owned a farm just outside of Knoxville, Tenn., for a century. He inherited the land from his father. It was originally good land. Every year some 6000 tons of water fall upon each acre of his farm which is situated on a hillside. The rich top soil he owns averages perhaps 1000 tons an acre. To make a living for his family, he has put his farm into corn during the last 10 years. The heavy annual rains, averaging from 40 to 50 inches a year, have hit the exposed soil and what was once a rich farm is now a series of gullies. It is as though two invading armies had fought over the Morgan farm and left nothing behind but a pitted desolation with which only the shell holes of the Western front in 1918 would compare. ana "It M ORGAN is a ruined man. His land is worthless because the top soil has disappeared. He had to stand by helplessly and watch this happen. In the first place, he did not. know what to do about it. In the second place, had he known, he could not have afforded the nbcessary labor, equipment and fertilizer to have saved himself. Today, Farmer Morgan is on the relief rolls. The taxpayers must support him or his family, else they starve. His property, no matter who owns it, can not be taxed because it is worthless. Let us trace that top soil of Farmer Morgan's and see what has happened to it. The rain washed it into the Tennessee River. Part of it was carried downstream to New Orleans, where that community had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep it from lodging on the bottom of the Mississippi River, raising the river bottom and thus causing the Mississippi to flood over the delta. The taxpayers in New Orleans spent last year many thousands of dollars constructing jetties and levees to make sure that Farmer Morgan's top soil was carried out in the Gulf of Mexico, where it would be of no value to anybody but where it would not create a flood problem. The top soil which did not travel to New Orleans from Morgan's farm settled in the bed of the Tennessee and Mississippi Rivers and the government had to send dredges at enormous expense to suck it up from the river bottom in order to keep the stream open for navigation. Some of it lodged behind the dam at Muscle Shoals and is there busily filling up the power reservoir so that in a period of years the storage capacity of the reservoir will be useless, because the area of the dam will be filled and it will have become a mere waterfall. Farmer Morgan's top soil is an asset to the United States only so long as it remains on his farm. It is a liability when it washes down the river. a a a TV A proposes to keep that soil where it belongs and where it can be of value. The TVA looks upon the land as a public trust. “We seek to make it possible fqj

The Indianapolis Times

the farmer to live up to his sacred stewardship of that land, that it may be handed down to the generations to come in better condition than we received it,” said Dr. Harcourt Morgan, director of TVA, in charge of the agricultural program. “If our generation neglects this trust, there will come a generation which will find it impossible to maintain the decent standards of life we have so painfully achieved. For, once we dissipate the growing power of our soil, every other advance in our civilization becomes futile. We will wake some day to find ourselves on the downgrade, as so many civilizations in the past have found themselves doomed by their inability to nourish their citizens.” TVA executives point out the fate of Babylon and the TigrisEuphrates economies upon which the desert moved in just as it is doing now in our Western wheat states. They speak of the example of the ancient Greek culture. The hills of Greece were once the richest agricultural territory of the Mediterranean. Careless farming combined with rain erosion reduced present-day Greece to a precarious pasture land for scrawny goats. Os the 40.000 square miles which make up the TVA’s vast experimental laboratory, at least 10,000 are threatened with destruction because of erosion. During the nearly two years of existence, TVA has been concentrating upon a technique for the checking of this vast waste. It is not interested alone in controlling the waste of the soil because the deposits of silt fill up power reservoirs and make a flood problem, but it wishes to aid the farmers in escaping from a onecrop system by creating hillside pastures where corn grew before. a a a TVA knows that an increase in Southern herds of livestock means a better agriculture and hence a better diet for the two million people that live within its authority. Milk and green vegetables are the enemies of pellagra and tuberculosis, which are the health curses of the Tennessee Valley. There are a million acres in the Tennessee Valley devastated by erosion. “Soil boils is what we call them.” said Dr. Harcourt Morgan, and indeed they are just that. Up to the present, there has been no way in which a farmer could guard himself against this infectWn. A, prudent land-owner might have a careless neighbor and the “soil boil” is infectious. Erosion gullies run uphill and the silt runs downhill without regard to property rights. Abused nature will not be denied. The Tennessee Valley Authority has developed a technique for the control of this infectious disease of the soil. It is a simple technique. but requires organization. The ravages of rainfall show first on the land as tiny brown ribbons where the under soil is exposed. Such land is easy to save by terracing. TVA consulted with the Caterpillar Tractor Cos. of Peoria, 111., and between them both, they invented a broad terracing machine to check this type of erosion. The TVA goes to a group of farmers in a county and signs up 1500 acres. The Caterpillar Tractor Cos. furnishes the equipment with no down payment. TVA furnishes the technical personnel. The farmers pay the bill, which runs all the way frjtn less

INDIANAPOLIS, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, 1935

1. Soil erosion before the TVA “took over.” 2. TVA goes to work terracing. 3. The same site as shown in Photograph 1, depicting the results of TVA anti-erosion work. 4. Here is what probably was the last Clinch River flood. It happened early this spring, but by next spring a giant levee will have 'been completed. The levee will

than a dollar an acre to $3 an acre. It is a purely co-operative proposition and no farmer if forced to participate unless he feels like it. These terracing machines n;n along a hillside farm following the contour lines of a geographical map and cut a broad furrow which prevents the tremendous downpour of rain from washing unhindered into the river. a a a npHERE are 75 such machines now in operation in the Tennessee Valley and it is interesting that the demand is so great for them that several of them have had to be equipped with floodlights so that they can be operated 24 hours a day. These machines take care of incipient erosion. In cases where erosion is far advanced and where the land is badly gullied, a different technique is necessary. There are some 5500 Civilian Conservation Camp employes located in the Tennessee Valley. They are charged with remedying these cases of advanced erosion. Let us go back for a moment to the Morgan farm which is pockmarked with gullies. The CCC

SIDE GLANCES By George Clark

T.nt&p-K-WT. o. *7.

“I have a terrible time keeping my parents in shoes. You %. should see how they kick them out.”

protect the seedling trees being used to reforest the' Tennessee Valley area. 5. The TVA experiments with phosphate fertilizers. Waste slag running out of phosphate furnace. 6 and 7. A study in contrasts. Photograph 6 shows a typical share cropper’s home. Photograph 7, a typical Southern mansion of romantic memories.

boys come in and smooth out the gullies, using plows and shovels and then lay over the soil brush and straw to keep the rains from washing the ground further. Through this matting, they sow a quick-growing grass. The idea is to set up a root system which will hold the soil together under the terrific onslaught of rain. After the grass is grown, trees are planted, usually the quickgrowing variety such as locust. TVA plans after a few years to take these formerly gullied lands and put them into tree crops, which will yield either lumber or nuts. But whichever they do, this land can no longer wash down into the Mississippi Valley and be an expense to the communities which wish to keep it from raising the level of the river and therefore causing them to build levees and jetties. But if this land is to be permanently redeemed, the elements must be put back into it which will grow plants in abundance. Vegetable life needs carbon, oxygen and hydrogen, and it gets these from the air and water. It also needs nitrogen but this element it can obtain from a plant family called legumes, of which clover and beans are members and

which extract the nitrogen from the air and put it into the soil. But a very essential plant food is phosphorus, which is the one thing in vegetables combined with lime which go to make up bone. Phosphorus is being constantly drained from the soil because of our highly specialized civilization. The other elements of plant food may be replaced but not phosphorus. TVA is trying t.o find a technique whereby this very vital element can be vr stored to our land. ti a a ONE hears a great deal in TVA about ;he normal cycle of nature. Yo \ are told that it was the intention of nature that animals ate plants and that the animals then died on the land, thus replacing the elements which they had removed during that lifetime for their existence. The sanitation of the modern industrial civilization, while splendid from the standpoint of public health, has continued to rob the land of the materials which it needs for replenishment, particularly phosphorus. This very vital element goes into the making of bone in animals and thus our cemeteries which are uncultivated are richest in phosphorus of any land tracts now existing in the United States. Phosphorus is the limiting factor in plant life and TVA is trying to find a method of replacing it and re-establishing by artificial means the normal cycle which nature set up in primitive times. Central Tennessee is rich in phosphorous ore and the TVA has established an experimental station at. Muscle Shoals in Alabama where they are developing a cheap method of making fertilizer rich in this very essential element. What is the use. TVA scientists will say, of checking erosion and putting in crops unless you can supply the necessary phosphorus to guarantee continued productivity of that soil. The only phosphorus which is economically available now exists in prehistoric beds of marine fossils. One such deposit is in Florida, from which Europe has been wisely drawing its phosphate for many years. Another is in Tennessee and there are a few scattered beds in the Rocky Mountain states. TVA hopes by its experiment to develop a method for extracting phosphorus so inexpensively from the phosphate ores that any farmer who is doing anything like breaking even can afford to keep his land rich in this element. a a a THESE fertilizer experiments already have gone far, DUt the TVA management is not yet ready to announce the precise method for extracting fertilizer from this ore because they feel that in a short time they will have developed a brand new method which will • make phosphorus available to any farmer at a reasonable price. TVA does not look upon the farmer as a privileged character. It views hin as a part of our economic system. It knows that his ruin meanr the ruin of industry because his buying power must be raised if we are to have an economy of abundance in America. The experiments which are now going on in the Tennessee Vqllev in the control of erosion and the development of fertilizers may make over in the next decade agriculture in the United States. Tomorrow—The T V A Test Tub" and transportation. 'Copyright. 1935 by The Indiana poll.

Second Section

Enterd as Serond-O<r Mutter at Poatoffice, Indianapolis. Ind

Fair Enough WESTBROOK PEGLER FROM a salesman calling on the trade in Cleveland. E. G. Guening. as the signature appears to be, comes an interesting stab at a solution of the question discussed in these dispatches a few days ago. “What goes on in the mind and heart of a man 80 years old. with a fortune of 200 millions, who wants to add to his pile?” 'I have often wondered." Mr. Guening writes, "why none of you columnists, whose opportunity for observation and contemplation is so broad, never hew more closely to the line of business

fundamentals and always seem to feel that a so-called business man should be ruled by something other than the rules of business. “I am no one to hold brief for Andrew Mellon, but I feel moved to answer your question. 'What is in the mind of Andy Mellon, anyway?’ “I immediately thought that what's in Andy Melloifs mind is exactly what's in mine, and yours, and every other individual's who is not wondering hdw little he can do and get by. That is, how can I do the best job and within the

rules? With Andy and me. the job is the Job of business. That's what goes on in Andy Melon's mind. B B B We Alt Want More ■ "'HE job he has picked out. by inheritance, by -I- training, by parental example, by precedent, is banking primarily, financing secondarily, and manufacturing thirdly. His criterion of the way he is doing his stuff is the profit he makes. He did not select this measure of performance. By inheritance it was selected for him. By example it is glorified. By the acclaim of the populace it is confirmed. “The bigger his profit the more successfully Mellon's life has been lived. That's what he thinks of. I'm sure. He is playing the game of business. There are rules made for that game. Handicaps are set, if you please, against the more efficient players sc that the less efficient can still play without losing their shirts. "The business rules are made bv the government, not by Andy Mellon. If the rules are wrong or loose or do not protect the inefficient, blame the rules. Don't blame the man w r ho takes the trouble to find out just what the rules are, has the brains to take full advantage of all the moves permitted within the rules and plays the game that way. “You might as well criticize a Babe Ruth or a Gene Sarazen because they hit the ball so effectively. Maybe Babe Ruth ought to be satisfied with 27 home runs a year. Maybe Sarazen should be satisfied with two over par. Maybe Max Baer should pull his punches, let all opponents strike him twice before he starts. They take advantage of all the opportunities which the rules give them. “If I can find some way of leaving my kids SIOOO I won’t stop At SIOO, and if SIOO,OOO, I won’t stop at SIOOO. If your game is golf you surely don't say that a score of 80 is good enough for a reasonable man and therefore quit trying when you reach 80. “S< it is with dear old Andy. If he can make sloo,oot 000 he is not going to quit at any figure below that. ‘Not the quarry but the chase; not the laurels but the race, let me. Lord, enjoy always.* The dollars only tell Andy whether he is running a good race.” a r They Start From Scratch IDO yot know where Mr. Guening plays his golf, but as a consistent 110 golfer I am aware that in a match with Gene Sarazen I would be entitled to a handicap of about 50 per cent of his score. There is no handicap system in baseball, but in pugilism very often the good fighter is compelled to starve or boil himself down to weight with consequent loss of strength in order that conditions may be made more nearly even for the less efficient gladiator. In foot-racing, too. the scratch man makes a concession to opponents who can not pick them up and put them down with the same rapidity. In th? cases of the Andrew Mellons and other scratch men of business, however, the handicaps are arranged in favor of the champions. Certainly no duffer with an income tax of SSO can avail himself of the legal devices by which the multi-millionaire is permitted to escape payment and remain within the rules If the sporting analogy is good, moreover, then the mighty champions ought now and again to show a little chivalry to their pathetically weak, inferior and groggy opponents. This is often done in sport. In sport, the loser does not become the economic slave of the winner; his children the slaves of the winner’s heirs. And, finally, when Babe Ruth and Gene Sarazen die, their batting averages, their achievements will die with them. The son of Babe Ruth, if he had a son, would have to start as a bush-leaguer and hit his own home runs. The son of Gene Sarazen will never be allowed to turn in one of his old man’s record-breaking cards as his own. (Copyright. 1935. by United Feature Syndicate. Inc.)

Today s Science BY DAVID DIETZ DR. ALFRED E. EMERSON, professor of zoology of the University of Chicago, is now on his way to the Panama Canal Zone, where he will spend six months studying the habits and behavior of the termites, the amazing insects which have one of the most nearly perfect social organizations known. The termites are sometimes referred to as the white ants, but this designation is open to objection, since they differ from true ants and moreover, are rarely white. The termites are i elated to the roaches. Dr. Emerson plans to analyze the effect of changes in temperature, humidity, and light upon the elaborate social life of the termites. He plans also to arrange battles between termite “soldiers" and other species in order to study the defensive behavior of the insects. The social organization of the termites includes the division of labor and the domestication of animals. Each nest contains a queen and king, soldiers, and workers. The queen and king monopolize the function of reproduction and most of the members of the colony are their offspring. Workers and soldiers differ anatomically. The workers provide the food for the king, queen, soldiers and young. This consists chiefly of woody substances. The soldiers have large heads with mandibles for fighting. a a a THE domestic animals, known technically as termitophiles, are a species related to beetle*. Dr. Emerson plans to make a special study of this group. The activities of the termites are very complex, according to Dr. Emerson, often involving a chain or series of as many as eight or nine instinctive actions. In order to study these, he plans to change conditions of humidity and the like in parts of the nests, measuring the changes with accurate apparatus and noting the reactions evoked. a a a ANOTHER phenomenon which he plans to study are the 6warming habits of certain termites. These species develop wings at certain stages of their development, leaving their nests to fly elsewhere and start new colonies. Unlike humans. Dr. Emerson observes, termites will not fight members of their own species. The soldiers engage in battle against other species only as defensive measures. But while there is little anti-social behavior among the termites Dr Emerson finds a lack of diversity in their social organization compared with other social organizations. While in the Canal Zone. Dr. Emerson will make his headquarters on the Island of Barros Colorado m Gatun Lake where the National Research Council maintains a biological station.

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Westbrook Pegler