Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 16 January 1937 — Page 9

| Hale has never been bit.

gr ye oes FR HY. Fetes ete Trace rr a —~

Vagabond FROM INDIANA |

"ERNIE PYLE

N ARIZONA, Jan. 16.—Rudy Hale and his wife catch live rattlesnakes for a living. To me that would be ten thousand times worse than death. But they enjoy it. These Arizona sands are filthy with rattlers. Rudy and his wife work the desert for

snakes as a farmer works his land for crops. Rattlers have built them a place to live, rattlers have kept them in food and clothing for eight years, rattlers provided the start for their little gas and grocery business on the desert road. They love rattlers. Rudy Hale was born in Illinois, of German parentage. He still has an accent. He was brought up to be a surgeon. A relative sent him to school abroad. He studied medicine in Austria four years. Then the relative died. His schooling stopped. His life turned. He wound up in California. For 20- years he worked as a master mechanic. Then carbon monoxide laid him out and he came to the desert for his health. It was after two years on the desert that the Hales came right up against it, and had to turn to snakes for a living. They started out by advertising in a San Diego paper. Before they knew it they were swamped with orders. They have sold snakes to zoos all over the country, to private collectors, to medical centers for serum, to state reptile farms. Today the Hales have their little store and gas station along the road, some 50 miles east of Yuma. They live back of the store. They live alone, and there is no one else for miles. Three steps from their door and you are ankle deep in bare sand.

n 2 2

Twelve Kinds of Rattlers

HERE are 12 species of rattler in this part of Arizona. The sidewinder is the most deadly. The Hales specialize in sidewinders. They don’t even use forked sticks to catch snakes. Just pick them up with bare hands and put them in a box slung over the shoulder. They usually hunt snakes for an hour after daylight and an hour before dark. . Rudy Hale and his wife have caught approximately 20,000 rattlesnakes in eight years. Rudy has caught as many as 50 sidewinders in one hour’s hunting. They have the desert cleaned almost bare of snakes for 20 miles around. They used to get 50 cents apiece for the sidewinders. “I just wish I could get 50 cents again,”

Mr. Pyle

| Rudy says. “Theyre down to 20 cents now.”

2 E- zn Huge Ones Less Valuable HE most he ever got for a snake was $7. That was a rare Black Mountain rattler. He says the huge snakes don’t bring as much as medium-sized ones. They're harder to-keep in capitivity, and zoos don’t want them. Hale has caught rattlers as big around as his leg.

He's caught them so big he couldn't handle them— |

they'd overpower him and pull his arms together— and he'd have to throw them away from him, and then go pick them up and try again. “I'm careful not to hurt a snake,” he says. “Any snake I ship is a good healthy snake.” He lets rattlers crawl his wife. She carries She has never been

all over him. So does rattlers around in her pockets. | bit either.

Mrs.Roosevelt's Day

By ELEANOR ROOSEVELT [yyy 2cerToN, Friday—It seems to mé this column is degenerating into a list of social entertainment, but this season of the year seems to be nothing but that. Particularly this year, for social functions are crowded into a short period, first because the President was away in South America early in December, and second because Lent begins on Feb. 10 and all official functions have to be over by that time. 3 So my chronicle continues! Last night the Speaker's dinner took place, attended by a great many Senators and members of the House of Representatives. After dinner, as usual, we had a musical. ‘Miss Joan Field, the violinist, and Miss Katherine goerner, the soprano, are both Americans. The French {hitist, Monsieur Rene le Roi, who-has been staying here, has been known to me ever since he came on his first tour to this country. A long talk in my husband's study afterward with ajor .Henry S. Hooker and Mrs. William Brown Meloney. I think they would still be talking if I ad not suggested that is was time to go to bed, hinking of the work which still awaited me at my desk. In the wee small hours of the morning I crawled into bed, and was horrified when my maid gently hook me at 8:20 this morning and I realized that ne of my guests would be gone before I could dress, nd that two others were awaiting me for breakfast n 10 minutes! re Sin, I managed not to be very late, to get through all

he usual routine and to leave for the crippled childen’s clinic at the Children’s Hospital at 10:50. As I ad seen the old clinic last year, the board of manaers was extremely anxious that I should see what ad been accomplished with the money which had een made at the President's Birthday Ball. It certainly is 8, joyous change and I only hope that in every ocality where these balls were held, some tangible esults as good ac these can be shown for the amount f money made last year and kept in the community. Afterwards I went over to Georgetown to see my son and daughter-in-law's new house. They have house, themselves very quickly and it is a charming ouse. -

~~ New Books | PUBLIC LIBRARY PRESENTS—

HOSE who are concerned with the questions of dictatorship, democracy, freedom of speech and thought, will find illumination and reassurance in Stefan Zweig’s RIGHT TO HERESY (Viking Press). nd indeed, it was, no doubt, with his eyes fixed upon the contemporary political scene that the author, exiled by the Nazis, wrote the story of John Calvin and Sebastian Castellio and Miguel Servetus. It is the old story of a dictator whose power is based upon oppression, and who to sustain this power ust resort to increasingly violent measures. And as today’s dictators ‘have their cgitics who must be “go-ordinated,” so John Calvin had his Castellio—the humane and tolerant scholar who was roused to vigorous opposition when Calvin and the city fathers condemned Miguel Servetus to burn alive at the stake. - "| Servetus died by fire. Castellio died of overwork only in time to escape trial and execution. But Calvin’s theocracy died by. its very excesses, while Castellio’s pleas for religious toleration lived to be universally accepted. . : 8 #2 » IN his subtitle, “A narrative of rebels and romantics,” Joseph Freeman sums up the autobiographical account which he presents in AN AMERICAN TESTAMENT (Farrar & Rinehart).. | The young Joseph, who came with his family from Russia to America when he was 7 years old, grew to intellectual maturity during the period of Teddy Roosevelt, Wilsonian democracy, the World War, post-war disillusionment, Coolidge prosperity, and the depression. 2 These fast moving years in American history formed, not so much the background for his own life, but the very texture of it. Greenwich Village Bohemianism, pacifism, poetry, art for art’s sake, the “New Masses;” Saccho and Vanzetti, Debs, Goethe, William Murray Butler, Floyd Dell—all played their parts in e process by which he attained an integrated philosophy of life.. Freeman’s autobiography is an analysis of American thought by one who, early a

|

rebel, came: only | York to Jerome by special

The Indianapolis Times

- Second Section

SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 1937

at . Postoffice,

Fntered as Second-Class Matter Indianapolis, Ind.

PAGE ¢';

\

RESTLESS AMERICA ON THE MARCH

By CAROLINE C. CURTIS Public Affairs Committee Staff Member

VV ASHINGTON, Jan. 16. —Ever since the first Englishmen, Dutchmen and Swedes came to America in the sixteen hundreds . the people in this country have been pushing West and South. By the time of the Revolution the most adventurous men and women had settled west of the Appalachians in the Ohio territory and the move toward the West kept up until the gold rush of 1849 spurred

thousands on to the Pacific.

People did not stop moving just because the whole country had been explored and opened to settlers and today families still are leaving their old homes and making new ones: In the 1920's many Negroes and whites left their farms in the South and went to Northern cities to find work in factories. : People leave their old homes and seek new ones for two main reasons. If men and women cannot worship their God in the way they want, they leave home. That was the reason for the settling of some of the early coloniés in

- America, but has not been the

reason for any of the important movements since then. The second reason for migration is the hope for better farms and better jobs in the new land. In other words, it is an economic motive. Today there are four sections in the United States which thousands are leaving. The most important area is the Southern Appalachian coal plateaus. This covers eastérn Kentucky and Tennessee, southern West Virginia and western Virginia. Some of the poorest people in the United States live here. About one-fourth

of them have been on relief dur--

ing: the last few years. Their houses are very small and badly built. In one part of Kentucky only two out of 228 homes had running water in the kitchen. Only one home had a toilet, and only two had electricity. These people have very few doctors and many die from diseases which can be prevented. , ” ” 2 HY is this mountain country so poor now? Has it always been hard to make a living there and will it always be so? There are three important resources in this part of the country—the land, forests and minerals. Though farming started in eastern Kentucky in 1789, the soil was never good and it has become poorer and poorer. Most of the farms are in hilly country, and the best soil, which is on top, is washed away by the rains. The farms are small. Since 1930, about 80,000 people have moved back to this part of the country. They are men and women who had gone to cities and taken jobs in factories and then had been laid off. Thus in the last six years the farms have had to feed many more than was possible. In the early days, the forests were a very important part of the life of the Southern Appalachian country. Today all but 7 per cent of the original timber has been cut down. Until about 1900 no : one in the United States thought about planting more trees to take the place of those cut down. This is much better country for forests than for farms and the U. S. Forest Service believes that a number of additional persons could be empioyed if the forests were looked after and fires prevented. There is a great deal of oil, coal and gas in the Appalachian area and mining of these resources provides jobs for many, but not for all those who need them. Experts have figured that there

and part of Texas.

The farmyard of an abandoned wheat farm in the dust bowl area of Texas. Conditions such as these cause the dischuraged owners to “pull stakes.”

Thousands on Move in Ceaseless, Often Futile, Search to Improve Lot

An Oklahoma family, plagued by dust, sticks it out.

Packing up! A farm family motivated by the spirit of the old pioneers.

are about 500,000 families on the farms and 60,000 families in the coal mines who must look elsewhere for their living. Some could work in the forests and some are engaged in handicrafts in their homes, but the wages for this work are so low that it is not a solution.

2 o # HE second part of the United

States which is very poor is the old Cotton Belt. It includes South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas The soil is very fertile, there is plenty of rain and crops are easy to grow, but the trouble has been that it has put all its eggs in one basket; everything depends on cotton. Since the World War the price of cotton has been very low which means that the cotton growers’ income has been very small. The boll-weevil also has done much harm. The result is that many have lost their farms and have become tenants and share-croppers. Since they rarely get enough money from the cotton they grow to last until next year’s crop is sold, they are always in debt. During the last 15 years many factories have opened in the South. Wages are lower than in the North and employers have found it profitable to go there. These new factories cannot give work to all those who need it and there are probably 6,000,000 more people in the South than there are jobs. Another section of the country

where jobs are scarce is in northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. The trouble here is not one of too many people, but of too few people. People live many miles away “from their neighbors and it is very expensive to keep up the roads and schools. As in the Southern Appalachians, the people depend on farms, forests and mines. The soil is poor and the summers so short that crops do not grow well. Forests are more important than farms. The best trees have nearly all gone, but the Federal, State and local Governments are working on forestry programs which wiil give employment to those who cannot make a living on the farms or in the mines.

2 » ” TT fourth area of poverty is in the Great Plains. It makes up part of the States of Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska,

Kansas and Oklahoma. The cli-.

mate is bad for agriculture and the soil is very poor. Everyone knows of the droughts. of 1934 and 1936, and of the dust storms which have blown away the best soil. This part of the country originally was covered with grass that was excellent food for cattle. The roots of the grass grew so close together that the soil could not blow away in dry seasons. How= ever, during the World War the price of wheat was high and farmers plowed up acres and acres of grass land to plant wheat. Since the war less wheat is needed and the price is now so low that

TRULY UNIQUE TOWN SLOWLY SLIDING INTO THE GLORY HOLE

By NEA Service EROME, Ariz. Jan, 16.—Without waiting for Judgment Day, or even a tentative tootle of Gabriel's trumpet, this town is slowly sliding into the Glory Hole. : Scarcely a day passes without changes in the curb lines, settling of buildings, cracks or bulges appearing suddenly in walls, space suddenly appearing between buildings which had been flush together. The town is slipping, sliding, teetering down the slope of Mingus Mountain toward the Glory Hole, the vast excavation from which blasting and shovels have removed thousands of yards of earth and copper-bearing ore which once made Jerome a mining boom town. Some day that hole, which made Jerome, is going to unmake it again. It’s quite a town still, the 10th largest in Arizona. But the founders who built it 60 years ago either didn’t know or were careless of the fact that it was built squarely above a “fault.” That's the geological term for a

dislocation of rock layers when a |. section breaks and then slips either |

vertically or horizontally so that the butt ends of the broken rock layers no longer fit together.

” E- 2 IXTY years ago discovery of rich copper deposits drew hundreds of prospectors to Mingus Mountain. Then big copper companies bought up their claims and started development. Jerome was soon a buzzing town of 7000 people. Money flowed like water; payrolls were large and the demand for entertainment was high. New popular songs were rushed from . New

‘pony -

Theatrical troupes and even opera stars were imported at fabulous cost. It was a boom town in the best Western sense. Unlike so many of the boom towns, it did not die. Today it is still a prosperous, busy mining community. - But it is sliding, sliding—

A scene on one of the main streets in Jerome, Ariz. Note the angle of the building and the telegraph pole, and the crack at the top of the building the slipping and

front caused sliding of the

-{ tainside,

Three years ago residents noticed the first movement. But during the last five months the slipping has

been speeding up. ” 8 ”

NE man who had driven his car into his garage one night awoke the next morning to find that he The approach was destroyed when the earth under

couldn’t get it out.

cne door sank 18 inches. Many buildings

dow sills.

The residents are philosophical. Nobody has been killed or badly hurt as yet. A hotel keeper chuckles as he points to the roof of his hotel. “The northwest corner stands out just 16 inches beyond the foundation point that used to be plumb below “Some old boy is going to get a 600-foot ride some night if his bedroom slips off down

it,” he laughs.

the hill!”

Jerome people aren’t

than it ever was:

“You are entering Jerome, the

most unique town in America.”

Perched on the precipitous mounwith incredibly narrow streets that switch abruptly back and forth, it is not uncommon for four-story houses to have their roofs just about at the level that you pass as you double back along the same street a little farther along. Will suggested

Rogers once

lean over at drunken angles, their walls bulging. Some have had to be condemned. Even the solidly built U. S. Postoffice shows a buckling of the cement floor and cracks over the win-

worried. What they put on the sign you see on entering the town is truer today

the farmers can barely make a living. The answer to their problem is a return to grazing. The individual farmers cannot do this alone; they must have help from the States. Since grazing requires more dand than farming, many farmers will have to find other work. : : In three of the four regions described there are too many people. Millions will have to move to other places if they are to find jobs that will permit them to support themselves and their families. What are the chances for .jobs in other parts of the United States? Does farming offer any opportunities? It does not seem so. Ever since machinery has been used on farms, the number of farm hands has decreased. Paper could be made from corn stalks and straw, but. pine is much cheaper and there is lots of it. It has also been suggested that a certain amount of grain alcohol be used in gasoline. But this would make gas more expensive and no one, not even the farmers, would like that.

There is little chance that many more miners can be employed. As business conditions get bettermore workers will be wanted in industry, but not enough. Machines are being invented every day that require fewer laborers so that a factory can make more goods now than in 1919 with fewer men. Some parts of the country lack doctors, teachers, and clergymen but there are too many in other

By RAYMOND CLAFPER 16.—Various

T. LOUIS, Jan. signs, rather scattered it is true, would indicate some awakening among American citizens concerning governmental activities, not only those of national character, but local. Nebraska is trying out its new

compact one-house Legislature, to

which members rating considerably above the average of the old-style legislator, in experience and intelligence were elected last fall.

In Cincinnati an attempt is being

| made to establish, on the basis of a

detailed study of the industrial population, a program of vocational training for the unemployed and for younger persons who have never worked, which will fit a larger percentage to take their places in private industry. In Kansas City a Federal Grand Jury is delving into the election frauds charged against the Pendergast machine, with the prospect that for the first time in many years some progress will be made in cleaning up a flagrant condition.

” » 8 T. LOUIS COUNTY is attempting to modernize its government. A movement has begun to obtain a State constitutional amendment which will permit St. Louis

KNOW YOUR INDIANAPOLIS

Indianapolis annually receives an average of 5,000,000

* divicing up.

bushels of wheat. Local mills |

1

sections. There does not seem to be nied for more of them so much as there is a need for a better

2 ” ”

ART of the trouble is that there is no way of knowing where the work is. It is very hard for people to find out, though they know that the chances are better in thie North and West than in the jiouth and in the cities than on the farms. Since 1910 England has tried out a number of ways of finding the right job for the right man. One of the first things done in England was to set up Government employment agencies all over the country. Unemployed men hear of jobs through the employment agencies and are able to move to where there is work. Great Brit=ain has also rented land to farmers oi. long-term leases. Women have been trained to do housework ‘and training centers have been opened for semiskilled workers. |i The passage of the Wagner-Pe§-ser Act in 1933 is the most important thing that this country has done io get people to the places where there are jobs. The law provicies for Federal and State employment agencies. Because there are so many unemployed this a¢t has not yet been any help in moving people out of the poorest parts of the country. However, 45 business gets better, and more workmen are wanted the employment agencies are expected to do this.

‘Clapper Sees Awakening Of Interest in Government

- | bedside.

County to establish more workable machinery in place of the present arrangement, which was set up by

the Legislature under restrictions

suited fo rural communities rather than to an urban one. The INlissouri Legislature is being asked to revise the State law which provides for continuance until 10 days afier the Legislature adjourns of any dase in which an attorney is a memker of the General Assembly, All that a criminal, fighting for delays, nedds to do it to hire a lawyer who is .n the Legislature.

! #8 9 HUS in various localities is reflected the same desire to improve tiie governmental machinery that is /i¢en in the broad reorganization jilan just proposed for the Nationa! Government by President Roosevelt, as well as a second plan submitted by the Brookings Institution. Possibly, as President Roosevelt sugiiested in proposing his plan, it is 1jecessary to improve the functioning of our Government machinery if democracy is to be effective in z world where many nations have found it weak and cumbersome and have cast it aside for streamlined dictatorships. Everyone recognizes that democracy is something of a luxury and is bound to involve considerable lost motion. But the business of Government, national as

well as .ocal, is becoming so big, so

extensive and so costly that it is natural {hat some effort be made to

| tighten i.

Public sentiment in the main Ce these adaee Government

| do the same thing at his mother’s funeral.

Our Town

GPEAKING philosophically, as I try to once in a while, it seems to me that the effie cient machinery of publicity, and especially that of modern advertising, threatens real values as never before. Speaking more spe-

cifically, the present practice of endowing inanimate things with human qualities alarms me; For example: It’s quite a common experience today

stores are selling “distinguished” Ll shirts, “authoritative” pants, “cute” culottes, “smart” frocks, “clever” socks, ‘‘snooty” pajamas, “hospitable” beds, . “snappy” suspenders and so on and so forth. Get the idea? I am willing to grant that the idea has its points. For cne thing, it lends color and charm to the amenities around the house. On the other hand, I am not at all convinced that it is necessary, or even desirable, to write a human interest story around an advertisement. Not yet, anyway. To tell the truth, I'm scared of the cons Which is to say that I'm scared of the time when the present practice becomes an integral part of life and letters. - When that time comes—and goodness knows we are heading for it right now—it won’t be anything out of the ordinary to hear Alex Vonnegut described as “hospitable as a bed,” or Luther Dickerson as “dise tinguished as a shirt,” or Wilbur Peat as “authorita= tive as a pair of pants.” That is why I thought the matter of enough importance to sound a warning. # 8 a Be

More to Deplore

: AM of which leaves me enough room to deplore something else that is gaining ground! in Ine dianapolis. . | : I went to the symphony concert last Tuesday and learned to my dismay that the people applauded exactly four times when they had an even dozen chances to show their appreciation. What I mean, of course, is that they reserved their applause for the final movements of the four scheduled pieces, thus leaving the eight intervening movements in silence, Seems that’s the stylish way to act at symphony cone certs nowadays. 1 I know exactly why Indianapolis audiences act that way. Back in 1930 when we had a winter very much like the present one, Leopold Stgkowski of the Phila= delphia orchestra was considerably annoyed by the coughers and sneezers in the audience. Anyway, he got mad and ruled out applause as something unseemly and uncalled for. He made it appear that a man who would applaud at a symphony concert would As a was resérved for the final

compromise, movement,

applause 2 » 8 Idea Hit Indianapolis

A FTER a year of this sort of thing in Philadelphia, the idea traveled West and hit Indianapolis.

It took hold of Schaefer's symphony audiences in the

season of 1931-32, and the next thing we knew it had

of loud and lusty applause west of the Alleghenies. It’s probably too late to do anything about it now. Anyway, it’s none of my business if music lovers want to act that way. But it is part of my business to see that music lovers don’t carry the practice beyond the precincts of their own bailiwick. I press the point because just the other evening I saw a couple of symphony habitues at a basketball match. It was a pretty exciting game but it didn’t move the musicians to show any emotion during the game. ‘At the end of the game, however, they applauded as if a symphony had finished. Shows what we're headed for if the musicians have their way. x Yor

— A Woman's View By MRS. WALTER FERGUSON

N one season 400 young women applied for entrance to a single nurses’ training school at Memphis, Tenn. Probably the motives which prompted them were not altogether idealistic, although the girls themselves may have believed they wanted only to serve suffering humanity. : Nursing in theory is perhaps the most romantic of all professions open to women. It is true that thou= sands of nurses find good husbands in hospital wards, The movies also have enhanced the glamour which hovers over this calling. Even Florence Nightingaie was transformed on the screen into a soft creature who captured men’s love as easily as she did their respect and reverence, although the real Florence was a level-headed person with no time for sweet sentiment in her busy and valuable life. Invariably the cinema nurse is lovely to look at and never lacks for bevies of sweethearts. All this must have had some= thing to do with the influx of girls into training schools. And what a jolt the poor youngsters are go=

work! There's probably no job less romantic than nursing. It requires great grif, unending labor, tireless patience and a sympathy that is indestructible. The value of a good nurse is above rubies, even though we

often grouch that it's her price which better. fits the description. 2 Nursing, like doctoring, is something we ho®l loud=

ly for when we need it and speedily forget once we have done with its benefits. Yet I dare say not one of us but at some time has felt a heavy heart grow lighter and a sore body easier at the sight of a vision in white, impersonal and kind ‘as an angel, at our

Your Health

By DR. MORRIS FISHBEIN Editor, American Medical Assn. Journal !

HILE several factors may produce conditions in the body similar to those of pernicious anemia, a series of investigations, culminating in the work of Drs. Minot and Whipple which earned them the Nobel prize, has led to ‘the solution of what used to be an unsolved problem of medical science.

There was a time when practically everyone with

pernicious anemia died of it. For some reason, the blood cells failed to form in suitable amounts; sec ondary symptoms set in, affecting the nervous system and the digestion, and the patients died. Nowadays, it is believed that the condition is caused by failure of the stomagh to secrete an important factor, which results in stopping development of red blood cells. The person who has pernicious anemia usually has fine, often silvery gray or mud-colored hair, slightly yellow skin and whites of the eyes, sore tongue, and sometimes tenderness over the gallbladder. ‘Why the body fails to develop the necessary factor for stimulating formation of red blood cells is not known. As investigations of this disease continued, it occurred to the Boston investigators that there was something in the dietary that was important in relation to formation of red blood cells. At first they fed raw liver, and then cooked liver, to victims of this disease, and the response of the blood-forming organs was immediate. The blood began to improve in its red cell content. When it was found that people became nauseated after eating too much raw liver, and that they quickly tired of cooked liver, whether it was boiled, fried, or mixed in liver cocktails, chemists began to study the liver to see if they could isolate a specific substance of value. Extracts eventually were prepared in the form of dry, tasteless powders which are extremely, potent in stimulating formation of red blood cells.

Today there are preparations which may be ine er the skin, or even into

to pick up a newspaper and learn that our department

even invaded the Maennerchor, the last stronghold

ing to get once they find themselves actually in the

the veins, and stimulation,