Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 9 November 1936 — Page 11
agabond
FROM INDIANA
By ERNIE PYLE
OWN THE WEST COAST, Nov. 9—It's a mighty long way from Portland to San Francisco—a good two days in a car, and even three if you drive the way I do. So we hum along, thinking not much
about anything except getting there, but as we drive little things pop into our head, and out agein. Little things we've picked up rere and there, and forgotten, and here they are again: There is a
young man living mn the IdahoWyoming border who killed a . mother bear and 4hree cubs with a .22 pistol not long ago. Talk about government ownership . . . one-third of the state of Idaho is owned by the government, in national forests. Some of it is completely inaccessible. “You must have some of the finest stands of* timber in America,” I said to a forest ranger. “Yes,” he said, “outside of potany and Borah, that’s all we have got.” , Do you know that when they put out poison Jbait for gophers in the prairies, they always drop three slices of poisoned carrots in each place? Why three? Because the gopher is a hoarder, and if they left just two pieces, he'd put one in each cheek and carry them to his den and leave them there. But if they leave three—he's so greedy he won't leave any, and since he can't carry the third, he'll eat it right there, and die. Afr mail is getting mighty fast. I have a letter that left Albuquerque on a Tuesday afternoon, left Washington, D. C., Thursday afternoon, left Denver Friday afternoon, and reached me in Salt Lake City Saturday.
Mr. Pyle
= ” »
No Stories Lost
1 ALWAYS make carbons of my stories, so that if a batch is destroyed’ in an air crash Tl have the carbons to send right in. But in a year and 8 half nothing has been lost, nothing delayed. One day when I was in the Teamsters Union headquarters in Seattle, a bunch of club women were picketing in front of the building. So some coy teamsters got three or four white mice and turned them loose on the sidewalk. The women yelled and made a dash for the street, while the teamsters laughed. But I'll say this for them—they got themselves together, and grimly résumed marching, while the mice played all around.
2 ” ” Captain Is Janitor
‘CE down a little early tomorrow morning, will you, captain?” the secretary of the Pilots Association in Seattle said to a man one day while I was sitting there. I supposed some ship was coming in early and the captain was to pilot her down the Sound. “He's the janitor here,” the secretary told me. “He spent a lifetime as skipper of big ships, but he’s down and out, and we gave him a job sweeping up around here.” He's still captain to everybody, though. Bend, Ore, is up in the mountains, and the night we got there it was very cold—down to freezing, and felt colder. I decided to have a heater put in the car right away. ' A filling station man, who knew all the mechanics in town, volunteered to find somebody to install the heater for me at night. It took him three hours to find anybody. He called seven people. All were either busy or didn’t need the work. “Business is good here now,” the gas man said. Finally, at 10 p. m.,-we found a fellow.
Mrs.Roosevelt's Day
BY ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
pEroarma Pa., Sunday—Saturday I paid my first visit of this autumn to Mount Vernon. Mme. Jusserand and young Mrs. Fiske from Iowa, who were our guests, went with us. I never tire of the view of the river or the charm
of the house and grounds. On this occasion Col. Dodge himself met us. ‘Mme, Jusserand and her husband who was Frances ambassador to this country for 22 years, knew Col. Dodge well and watched his development of this historic spot with interest. There are always new things to be seen. Mme. Jusserand was particularly interested in the museum and pieces of china made in France for President Washington, which are now on exhibition there. The last thing we did was to visit Washington's tomb for the sake of sentiment, and Mme. Jusserand recalled our visit there during the war, with Marshall Joffre and Mr. Viviani. Then home for a press conference and an official luncheon before the ceremonies in Rockcreek Park. It was a gray day but it did not rain. Many people remembered this diplomat, writer, and most interesting human being, Jean Jules Jusserand, and they gathered to See the unveiling of the American memorial to his memory. It is an unadorned bench in granite and the ceremonies were simple but very touching. For Mme. Jusserand the day must have been filled with emotion, particularly when we came to the park where they had walked together so often. Yet, Mme. Jusserand remained her calm, sweet thoughtful self, and never forgot a kindly word or a nod of recognition #0 old frighds and acquaintances. Is it long training, or qualities that one is born with which make such self-control possible? In any case, it is the result, we hope, from good birth and breeding. . ‘
Daily New Books
THE PUBLIC LIBRARY PRESENTS—
ARL BARTH, a German-Swiss theologian who was dismissed from the University of Bonn in 1935 when he refused to give the oath of allegiance to der Fuehrer, continues to exert a profound influence on religious thinking in the western world. The Rev. E. G. Homrighausen, pastor of the Carrollton Avenue Reformed Church, Indianapolis, a frequent visitor to Germany and an influential and prominent
In his new CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA (Ab- : $2), the Rev. Mr. Homrighausen makes an impassioned plea for a penitent and revitalized Christianity shorn of -isms and panaceas, devoted only to His Spirit. He calls for a
‘Entered asBecond-Class Matter at Postoffice, Indianapolls, Ind.
By DAVID DIETZ Scripps-Howard Science Editor
Universe and All That Is in It Is Built Out of Three Particles, the Proton, the Neutron and the Electron.
(Fifth of a Series)
T is strange, said Sir William Bragg, the great British physicist, that the immense variety in nature can 'be resolved into a series of numbers. In that sentence Sir William gives the basic fact of what modern science has learned about matter. plains why it is possible for the physicist today to perform the trick which defied the alchemists of old, why it is possible for the physicist today to change one chemical element into another. He explains also why it is possible for the modern physicist to. smash the atom and why he looks forward in that process to a new source of energy which will make over the world in which we live. {
The world around us is It contains thousands upon thousands of substances. There is the air we breathe and many
He ex-
one of infinite variety.
other gases. There are thousands of liquids, water, oils, acids, and so'on. There are thousands upon thousands of solids.
David Dietz
But the chemist showed. that these multitudinous substances were all constructed out of 92 build-
ing blocks, the 92 different kinds of atoms composing the 92 chemical
elements.
Thus, water was a combination of hydrogen and oxygen,
sulphuric acid a combination of hydrogen, oxygen and sulphur, and
80 on.
But the physicist, by penetrating the inner structure of the atom
has reduced that $2 to three.
The 92 chemical elements are merely different combinations of
these fundamental particles. Moreover, the physicist has shown that each atom is a miniature solar system with a central sun around which K revolve tiny planets. The central sun is known technieally as the nucleus. The next great surprise brought forward by the physicist is that the atom is mainly empty space. Look at our own solar system. There is the sun and revolving around it nine planets .including the earth. The furthest planet, Pluto, is about 4,000,000,000 miles from the sun. It will be seen therefore that the amount of empty space in our solar system greatly exceeds the amount of matter. ! Today, physicists are certain that the proportion of empty space in our solar system greatly exceeds the amount of matter. Today, physicists are certain that the proportion of “empty space to matter “inthe atom. is 10,000 times as great as it is in the solar system. : You will at once realize how small the three particles must be which go into the atom if you recall that the diameters of the
atoms range from on®-250,000,-
000th of an inch; the diameter of the hydrogen atom, to one-100,-080,000th of an inch, the diameter of the uranium atom.
= ” EJ HE three particles are the proton, the neutron and the electron. The proton is electrically positive. The neutron, as its name indicates, is neutral. The electron is electrically negative. The electron, whose existence was demonstrated at the start of the century by Sir J. J. Thompson, is about 1-100,000th the size of the hydrogen atom. Actually, there is no way of measuring the exact size of an electron. We can only guess its size from its behavior and the strength of its electric charge. Dr.
. R. A. Millikan received the Nobel
prize for determining the charge on the electron. From that we estimate that the diameter of the electron is one twenty-fifth-tril-lionth of an inch. The proton, the positive particle, whose existence was demonstrated by Lord Rutherford, has ‘an electric charge equal to that of the electron, but its mass or weight is 1840 times as great. : That might lead you to think it was 1840 times. as large, but’ strange as it may seem! it is far more compact and has only about one-1800th the diameter of the electron. That gives the’ proton
a diameter of one-forty-five-quad-rillionth of. an inch. The neutron was not discovered until the close of 1931. Its discovery made necessary a considerable revision of our notions of how the atom is put together. In fact, . we are only just beginning to understand certain things about atomic structure. Dr. J. C. Chadwick and his associates, working in Rutherford’s laboratory at Cambridge, discovered the neutron. It is about the same size as the proton. # # =» A . “HE simplest atom of all is the “lightest, the atom of lightweight hydrogen. Its nucleus consists of a proton. Revolving around this nucleus -is one electron. Double-weight hydrogen is more complicated, Its nucleus consists
af a_protoh and a neutron. -One :f-
electron revolves. about this nuscleus. ' The next chemical element is helium. It has a nucleus consisting of : two protons and two neutrons. ' Two. electrons revolve around this nucleus. 5 Now there is an interesting fact, first pointed out by H. G. J. Moseley, the young British physicist, who lost his life in the Galipoli campaign son Aug. 10, "1915. It has been said that Moseley’s death was England’s greatest loss in the World War. Certainly, it was a loss for the whole world, for no one can say how rapidly atomic physics would have advanved had he lived to fulfill the promise of his youthful genius. Moseley - showed that the 92 atoms differed by the number of electrons revolving around their nuclei and that if you made a table of the atoms in the order of their weights, their number in the table told how many electrons revolved around the nucleus. Thus, hydrogen had one electron revolving around the nucleus, helium had two, lithium had three, and so it went, until you reached element No. 92, uranium, which had 92 electrons revolving around its nucleus. Now the atom is electrically balanced. This can only mean one thing. There must be as many protons in the nucleus as there «are electrons revolving around the nucleus.
“7! Students of science who have
taught that the nucleus contains ‘both protons and electrons are hereby warned that within the last couple of years, physicists
Village and Decentralization of Industry Urged .at Meeting
BY SCIENCE SERVICE
PRINCETON, N. J., Nov. 9.—The village is the hope of the nation, and industry should be decentralized t_ its outer fringes, building up smali suburbs in an industrial area rather
than large cities or scattered com= | ge © ° lformal give and take of opinions, urnished
munities. : This was the central idea advanced in a discussion here of
HE discussion, which was under ‘the leadership of Frederick F. Stephan, secretary of the American Statistical Association, was opened by. Dr. T. J." Woofter Jr., WPA population expert, and Dr. Dorothy S. Thomas, of Yale University's Institute of Human. Relations. .As a general basis for the free and in-
each of the members was f with a group of reports by popula-
The artist’s sketch shows the start.of the Fo
SEE
rdney-Settle stratosphere flight.
One
objective of such flights is to learn more about cosmic rays. These rays consist of electrified particles moving at immense speeds. Their study is contributing knowledge which is certain to prove useful in the task of smashing atoms.
have thrown that idea overboard. The old idea, for example, was that the nucleus of a helium atom contained four protons and two electrons. That idea is “out.” It is now agreed that the nucleus of the helium atom ' consists of two protons and two . neutrons. # 2 ‘2x “O go on then, the atomic number of an element not only tells how many electrons are revolving around the nucleus, but it also tells how many protons are in the nucleus. As already stated, neutrons as well as protons are found in the nuclei of all atoms except lightweight hydrogen which has merely ene proton for a nucleus. The atomic weight gives the clew to the number of neutrons in
the nucleus. Helium has an atemic
weight of four. Since we already know that there are two- protons in the nucleus, we see that we must add two neutrons to make a
total of four. (The outer electrons are so light that they play no part in determining atomic weight.) It is now possible to see what Sir William Bragg meant when he said that the infinite variety in Nature could be reduced to a series of numbers. All the differ--ences in atoms is to be explained on the basis of the number of protons, neufrons and electrons which they contain. It is now possible to see how. the physicist can realize the age-old ‘dream of the alchemist of turning one element into another. All he has to do is to knock one or more protons out- of the nucleus of the atom.
/
Thus, nitrogen has seven. protons. in its nucleus. Knock out one, leaving six, and: you have changed the atom to carbon.
But there is another important side of the picture. That is the energy content of the atom. When we change the configuration within an atomic nucleus we also change the energy content, In some cases a particle is ‘hot knocked put of the atom. : It is annihilated, completely transformed into energy. | That is why smashing the atom is a source of energy. In the concluding article of this series, I will tell just how the scientist sets about smashing the atom and what success he has had to date. * :
Next—Progress .in atom. smash-
POLITICS AS SULLIVAN SEES IT
*. BY MARK SULLIVAN ASHINGTON, Nov. 9.—In the Congress that meets next January, simultaneous with Roosevelt's second inauguration, the number of Republicans will be fhe smallest in over 70 years. In thé House there will be 89 Republicans —-out of a total of 435. In thé Senate there will be 17 Republicans—
out of a total of 96. Essentially, the facts are even
more spectacular than these figures. For the 17 Senators listed as Re-
Dakota, Borah, of Idaho, Norbeck, of South Dakota. Boiled down, it is doubtful if there will be 10 Sena-
Mr. | tors who can be regarded as Re-
publican in the sense of conservative, or any other ordinary meaning of the term. Further ‘yet, the tiny 10 will be poor in leadership. One of the most | ive anti-New Deal Republican Senators, of- Delaware, lost his To find any parallel: to the present smallness of the minority party
Hastings seat last
Civil War, when most of the Dem9crats in the recently conquered Southern ‘states were in effect disfranchised. To find a parallel for the present smallness of the minority party in the House we must go back to 1855. But these parallels are merely historically interesting. They have no value; they throw no faintest light on the present condition, or what may come out of it.
= # # : HE central question is, what 4 will the Democrats. in Con-
: By ANTON SCHERRER "
LEST any one muff the big idea back of Wilbur Peat’s show of Winslow Homer's water colors, now on view- at the Herron, let me say at once that this year marks the
centenary of that great artist’s birth. It's something worth remembering, because, to listen to people who ought to know, Winslow Homer has never been surpassed in hls chosen field. Indeed there are people like Duncan Phil- ; lips, for instance, who came right out and say that he was the greatest painter in water color the world has ever known, which, of course, takes in a lot of territory. Be that as it may, it is reasonably certain that nobody has surpassed Homer for economy of means, vivid light, sense of volume and general vitality—at least, not in his great paintings of the sea. Homer was the first painter to study the ocean with single-mind-ed zeal and to transcribe it with authentic reality. He was the first to sense the rhythm of waves and the way they rise, rear, roar and break, not hape hazardly, but in obedience to some inexorable law, Indeed, to see one of his great paintings of the sea is to sense that a wave is a thing of inner symmetry composed of a recurrence of stresses, of expected strength, at expected intervals. The wave pauses, gathers force, swells on to a climax, the crashes, its mass shattered into a dozen minor waves which themselves break and ripple into nothing.
” ” 2 - Weight and Speed of Waves UT what Homer makes even more plain is thag the whole movement of the sea is one inevitably conditioned by the law of tHe weight and the speed of its waves. It remained for an American painter to discover that. y
Mr. Scherrer
-havior of water and waves is to point out that Wins low Homer knew enough to paint the real thing, which is more than you can say for a lot of other painters in the last hundred. years.
As a ribtter of fact, Winslow Homer was the firs of our painters to speak authoritatively in the native accent. From the outset of his career to its end he
‘Yankee, untouched by foreign influence or manner, Like Walt Whitman he looked on this country and
-saw that it was good. ” #" »
Drove Straight to Point IKE Walt; too, Homer cared little: for what had gone before him. His method and style were those of 2a man who had something to say and who employed no rhetoric but ‘drove straight to the point. He dealt in realities, but they were of a kind that
“| abound in the unexpectedness of the usual.
As a result, his work stands alone and apart— racy of the soil, virile, concise and pungent. Even its faults are those of America. - He was a great artist and a great man—indeed, a great American. To see his work at the Herron this mn as great a privilege as celebrating the Fourth 0 .
i
NOVEMBER'S
Negroes in Indiana was shown on Nov. 9, 1865, when they held a state convention in Indianapolis, Recently freed from slavery, they petitioned the voters of the state for suffrage as well as the status of citie [ zens generally. They claimed a Negro population of 6050, scattered over 15 counties. They further claimed they owned property valued at $912,314, and that they paid $28,« 471 annually in taxes. Their ‘convention did them little good at that time, however. It was not until the special session of the state Legislature in 1869 that restrictions against admitting Negro children to the common schools were removed, Nothing was done toward abolishing Article 13 of the state Constitution, which forbade entrance of free
Negroes. into the state, until the regular and special assemblies of 1879. At that time an amendment to the Constitution, striking out the political restrictions on Negroes, was submitted. ; This amendment was ratified at a special election April 15, 1880, and the last legal political disability of the Negro was removed.—By F. M.
Watch Your Health
BY DR. MORRIS FISHBEIN
: Editor, Amer, Medical Assn. Journal
ment of birth to the time of death except for the hours spent in sleeping. As in the case of other. organs, overwork of the eye results in earlier exe haustion. Hence it is important to conserve vision in every way possible. 1 ; The eye may be rested exactly as may any other organ or tissue of the body and it is wise to give i%
regular rest periods. Moreover, it is possible to lessen
‘ditions. : The mechanism of vision is complicated and diffi= cult to understand without exact knowledge of cone struction of the eye. Actually, we do not see with the eye, but with the brain and the nervous system, Therefore, the chief factors involved in seeing are the optic nerve and vision center in the brain. Next comes the retina, a tissue behind the eye, which is a part of the nervous system and Which con= veys visions to the optic nerve. The lens is actually a lens and serves to focus objects on the retina. The
PAGE 11
Our Town
My only reason for digging so deep into the be=
was an independent American, more particularly a
Hoosier Yesterdays: : MBER ih
¥
HE first evidence of political activity among
UR eyes are used almost constantly from the mos
muscles control size and shape ‘of the lens in its
3
strain upon the eye by giving it suitable working cons
publicans include some whose Republicanism is little more than nom- . tors Hiram
--Johnson, of ornia, Frazier and Nye, of North
tiorr experts which are not yet pubdished but which will appear in -the Annals of the American: Academy of Political and Social Science.
“A Woman's Viewpoint---Mrs. Walter Ferguson |
theatrical attitude of which the movies are so’ fond =
in the Senate, we must go back to the Grant Administration, when the Democrats. had only 11 in a total of 74. But that was just after the
gress do? What the small group of Republicans does matters little. Senator Borah, continuing to be erratic, continuing to rather prefer a, minority role, may in the next
eyeball. Then there is the iris, which makes up the
America's greatest march, that of SL young people and families . from | farm to city and back to the farm. Expert students of these movements gathered at Princeton University for the annual meeting of the Popula-, tion Association of America to discuss their significance in relation to politics, economics and social problems. Scientists are “asking whether it is feasible for man to try to control population movements to the national advantage. 5 In an age of electric power and automobile transportation, people are now living in cities planned during a former era When coal and steam for both power force were the main reliance. This
Gs nowadays are given ‘a great deal of . advice and much of it is odious. id “Train your husband to bring you fresh flowers - once or twice a week,” is a choice bit culled from a periodical. “A man follows the standards set marriage
of by his : practice
was when a college education was regarded as the prerogative of the sons and daughters of