Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 1 February 1937 — Page 13

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Vagabond

FROM INDIANA

ERNIE PYLE

ERRYTON, hadn't actually misrepresented it to me; he just hadn't told me everything. He had said casually that he was going up to Perryton to make a little talk, and how

about me going along so he could show me the country. He said we'd stay all night (Perryton is 135 miles from Amarillo) and drive back ‘early next morning. We got here just after dark and went to & hotel. We'd hardly got in before two men came up to get us. They had big gray hats and looked like cattlemen. One was named Daniels and the other was Tom Ellzey. We got in their car and drove down to the high school. Even the presence of this official escorting party didn't make me tumble that we were going to something big. Inside the door somebody took our coats, and Gene started shaking hands with people, and a couple of men came up and introduced themselves to me. I asked one of them what this thing was, and he said it was the annual banquet of the Perryton Chamber of Commerce. In other words, the event of the vear in the northern Panhandle. Then somebody gave the word, and we all marched down to the basement, and there stood long banquet tables, as far as you could see, with girls in white standing behing them. Some fellow took Gene and me around to the far side, center, to the seats of the guests of honor! Now, mm the way up I had told Gene Howe to tip

Mr, Pyle

Tex., Feb, 1.—-Gene Howe |

the chairman off (I thought it would be just a little |

weekly meeting) mot to call on me to say anything. I told him I was born with a horror of making speeches, just as I was born with a horror of snakes,

» CI)

Didn't Look So Good

ELL, when I saw the setup of this Perrvton banquet, I could sense that things weren't looking so good for me. I whispered to Gene: “Did vou fix it up?” He whispered back: “You'll have to be introduced, because everyhody wants to know who the stranger is. I'll handle it. I'll just tell that story on you, and then you can get up and bow.” : Well, it was a mighty fine banquet. There must have been 300 people there, men and their wives. Perryton is a small town, but the main people for miles around belong to the Chamber of Commerce. And there were delegations from Pampa and Canadian and Borger, in Texas, and from Liberal, Xas. and one from Oklahoma. Everybody was dressed up and everybody acted nice. “What do you think of these people?” Gene whispered. “They don’t look like hicks, do they?” I whispered back: “You talk as if T had never seen a farmer before. Where do you think I come from? If they're hicks so am 1.” ” ” n ”

Rang Alarm Clock

HILE we ate, the high school band played. Between numbers there would be a little talk. Dave Shanks was toastmaster, and he was good. He razzed the speakers, and told them the shorter the better, and he had an alarm clock and actually rang it on the long-winded ones. A lot of people in America think that civilization peters out west of the Mississippi. But let me tell you that nowhere have I ever seen a public meeting conducted with more well-balanced sophistication than the one in this little prairie town of Texas. The speakers didn't pontificate. There wasn't this grave self-importance vou get in big city civic gatherings. There was plenty of wit, and it wasn't hick wit.

Mrs.Roosevelt's Day

By ELEANOR ROOSEVELT ASHINGTON, Sunday.—I want to begin my column today by thanking the many people

who have written me kind letters about it in the |

past few days. It makes me very happy to feel that they enjoy the little things as well as the more serious things which must of necessity come ito it

now and then. I think after the President's speech last that evervone must now understand just where the money raised for crippled children by the Birthday Balls goes. The Medical Committee created by the Warm Springs Foundation picks out the institutions best fitted for research and spends the 30 per cent not left in the communities in an effort to discover preventive measures for this dread disease. It is perhaps unwise for me to make a suggestion to the committee, but I want to register the fact that I wish a certain percentage of &¢his research fund could go to the patients’ aid fund at Warm Springs every wear, so that more free patients could be taken there. This is, of course, selfish on my part for I am always getting letters, which seem to me very pathetic. from people who cannot afford to pay and who very often live in localities where there are no Birthday Ball committees who might allocate some of their 70 per cent for treatment at Warm Springs. I had a grand luncheon party at the White House vesterday for the artists who had come to entertain at the different Birthday Balls here. After luncheon we became a sightseeing party and when we reached the President's office one of the girls said: “Let's write ‘Happy Birthday to You’ on a piece of paper for the President and all of us

sign it.” So sitting in his chair each of them signed their names: Jean Harlow, Mitzi Green, Marsha Hunt, Maria Gambereili, Robert Tavlor, Frederick

Jagel

night, but when I got up to say Happy Birthday to my husband and to drink a toast to all our absent friends, everyone of the old gang present, I know, thought at once of Louis Howe. As the years have gone bv we have added a few new members to the original gang and this year we added a few more, The talk ranged to South America, the President added a special toast to the memory of Gus Gennerich, a friend whom everyone present remembered.

New Books

PUBLIC LIBRARY PRESENTS—

“Came you indoors: come home, your fading fire Mend first and vital candle in heart's vault,”

HESE lines of Gerald Manly Hopkins have suggested the title of the new novel by Helen Hull, CANDLE INDOORS (Coward-McCann). This study of a man, charming, insouciant, enveloped in his business, philanderer partly because of

night

e Indianapolis Times

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1937

Fatered as Becond-Class Matter Indianapolis,

at Postoffice,

FLOODS

MUST AND CAN BE TAMED Integrated Program Is Best Mode of Attack on Flood Control

(Fourth of a Series)

By BENTON J. STONG Times Special Writer

DOR more than 200 years men have built ever higher and higher levees to hold the Mississippi within its banks. But the river has swept over the barriers to drive thousands of families from their homes and inundated hundreds of thousands of rich acres from

Missouri to the Gulf of Mexico. It was this unavailing

fight of two centuries which convinced President Roosevelt’s Mississippi Valley Committee that the river could mot be tamed with levees alone; that flood control could not be unraveled from the skein of related

problems which confront the whole Mississippi Valley, and that effective flood relief can be had only when the nation undertook reforestation of hundreds of thousands of eroded acres, control of erosion on other vast areas, and at least a billion-dollar program of reservoirs and public works on headwaters stretching from Pennsylvania to Colorado and Montana. Levees against the Mississippi were first built in 1717, along New Orleans’ river front. During the next 100 vears they were extended north to Arkansas. Under the old French law every river-front landowner was charged with building “barriers to restrain the waters ‘of the river.” In 1849-50 the Federal Government granted states all public lands along the Mississippi which were subject to overflow, in order “to construct necessary levees.” But although this spurred the construction of higher barriers, the problem remained unsettled. In 1879 Congress created the Mississippi River Commission 5 o ”n HIS commission's inquiry iesulted in the establishment in 1883 of a grade line for the top of all levees from Cairo, Ill, to the mouth of the river. The levee heights were accordingly raised, but by 1898 a further five foot increase was required. The new height had hardly been achieved when a series of floods, culminating in those of 1912 and 1913, forced establishment of a new and higher level, the third, in 1914, The levee system had been brought up almost everywhere to this 1914 line when the great flood of 1927 swept over its top and demonstrated that five or 10 feet more would be necessary. The result was adoption of the Jadwin Plan, calling again for higher levees and adding a new device, the “fuse plug” levees and emergency spillways. That plan, executed at a cost of nearly $300,000,000, was recent= ly completed. The Mississippi Valey Commit= tee reported in 1934 that the Jadwin Plan, although hy far the mo-t effective control device vet undertaken, was still inadequate.

" o 5 ey this plan, one-third of the 40,000 square miles which make up the alluvial area were consigned to frequent overflows.

~-Acme Photos.

Preparing for a flood stage of 53.5 feet, these workers are building a levee on the river front which will ran through a steel company warehouse on the Mississippi River bank, at Memphis, Tenn. (above). Pictured near Cairo, I, are just a few of the hundreds of men who labored night and day in a valiant effort to save the levees holding back the mad Mississippi and Ohio Rivers (right).

It left 4000 square miles in the three great emergency spillways. These lie between Bird's Point and New Madrid, Mo. between the mouths of the Arkansas and Red Rivers, and between the Red River and the Gulf of Mexico, The latter two are known as the Boeuf and Atchafalaya floodways. And as the levees are raised higher and higher under the plan, higher levees are required along the Mississippi's lower tributaries. As the Mississippi levee system confines higher floods, so the backwater area up each of the tributaries is increased and new hazards are created for people living along the Red, the Arkansas, the St. Francis and Little River. Only an integrated program, the Mississippi Valley Committee found, could begin to meet the situation. It would involve retarding the runoff of rains from 31 states through the replanting of great forests, retirement of hundreds of thousands of acres of eroding land from cultivation, and construction of a vast system of flood-control reservoirs in remote tributaries of the MissisSippi. A demonstration of the value of

reservoir dams has occurred in the Tennessee Valley this year, Seven hundred river miles or more above the New Madrid floodway, engineers early in January dropped the water gates of Norris Dam. Their immediate object was to keep the flood waters of the Tennessee River from overflowing a

ALITY

The old gang of 1920 dined with us as usual last

pique at his wife's absorption in their children, partly |

from lack of steadfastness, opens when the father and three children are called sharply to attention by the sudden death of the mother. Startled into responsibility for children whose real personalities are wholly unknown to him, undeterred by warning of relatives, the father plunges into the situation determined to supply whatever may be necessary to maintain his children’s home, The various crises that arise as the children develop, and the father's slowly growing appreciation

N .

of the things he himself has flouted, the candle he |

has left untended, make the story. » 8 n HAT the great plagues and diseases of the past

have been a vital controlling force in the history |

of civilization, is the theme of DISEASE AND DES. TINY (Appleton), by Ralph H. Major. Dr. Major is a professor of medicine at the University of Kansas. Some of the diseases which he discusses are the black death, jail fever, leprosy, hemophilia and yellow fever. Dr. Major has explored for many years the bypaths of medicine, both by travel and by reading. A colorful style of writing adds to the interesting quality of the facts he has gathered,

i ——

% 7 777, a V3 7 / y 2 7 : F ’ 2 7 ) 7 rs,

ANSOCIATION «+ «=

HE 1S A MANUFACTURING CHE OF Hig FATHER IN (898 , HE BECAME PRESIDENT AND EXEC. HEAD OF BU LILLY & €0. + NOW CHAIR. OF BOARD A PIONEER IN ALKALOIDAL STANDARDIZATION OF MEDICINES * « « MEMBER OF AMERICAN AND INDIANA PHARMACEUTIEAL ASSNS, AMERICAN CHEMISTS SORKTY AND AMERICAN MANUFACTURERS

HE 1S A eOLLEECTOR OF THE WORKS OF STEPHEN FOSTER « BORN (N GREENCASTLE, IND. * MARRIED LILLY MARIE RIDGELY OF LEXINGION, KY. * « « {E HAS TEEN DR, OF INDIANAPOLIS Y. M,C. A.

MIST + ON THE PASSING

TODAY'S LOCAL PERSON

wr”

R 18 YRS. ¢

ENTERED MANUFACTURING PHARMAEY WITH HIS FATHER IN 1876 « DIRECTOR OF LABORATORIES OF ELI LILLY & £0, 1882-98 ATTENDED ASBURY (NOW Dt Pauw) UN, PA. G. CUM LAUDE , PHILA. COLLEGE OF DUARMALY, 1882 ¢« MEMBER OF LOYAL LEGION AND UNIV, COLUMBIA, ART, CONTEMPORARY. AND COUNTRY CLLRS = *

IN #2 (Yon Re wl Fs

Josialh Kivhy Lilly

| | | | | | |

| the far-reaching consequences

| principle of collective

cofferdam at Pickwick Landing, in western Tennessee, and this No. 1 battle with the Tennessee's flood crests ended in a victory for the Tennessee Valley Authority. » ” » HILE winning this battle, the storage of the waters of the Clinch River in the remote Norris Dam basin reduced the Mississippi River's crest at Bird's Point and New Madrid, first fuseplug levee, by a fraction of an inch. It was not enough to have a great effect on the Mississippi flood crests, but the Mississippi Valley Committee suggested more than 100 such reservoir projects which, combined, would prevent many floods and tremendously reduce even the worst, In the Ohio River Valley alone the committee recommended 13 new reservoir projects which they found would reduce flood crests

Sullivan Cites Importance

five to six feet at Pittsburgh, four to six feet at Cincinnati, two to four feet at Louisville and one= half to one foot in the Mississippi itself at Cairo. Far in the West, the committee recommended the great Caddoa Reservoir on the Arkansas River in Colorado, which would both assist in flood control and serve an irrigation district. In Montana, three reservoirs are recommended on the Milk River, “There have been many advocates of flood-control levees alone,” the Valley Committee reported, “who believe that a river, if protected by levees, will scour its own channel through alluvial soil. This belief has little support in theory, and none at all in observed fact.”

NEXT-«The billion-dollar works program and how it would oper. ate in one valley<the flood.ridden Ohio.

Of Hearing on G. M. Strike

By MARK ASHINGTON, Feb. 1-The Court of Genesee County, Michigan, will make history today. General Motors has asked the Court to enjoin the leaders and strikers of the United Automobile Workers Union from continuing to occupy General Motors property. The hearing is set for 2 p. m. The outcome will determine the status of the “sit-down” type of strike in Amerjean law, The action which General Motors has asked the Court to take is of a kind which permits the labor leaders to state their side of the case, If the arguments bring out of incorporating this type of strike into American usage, the public will realize the importance of the event. » ” ” OR understanding of the fundamental issue, it is desirable to trim away all aspects of the hearing and of the strike, except one. Whether hours in General Motors plants should be shorter is not here material. Whether pay should be higher is immaterial. Whether the “assembly line” in automobile factories moves so fast as to put excessive strain on workers is immaterial. Many other questions, as to which much is to be said for the labor side, are not here material. To the bargaining there is almost universal assent in America; the platforms of both political parties last summer indorsed

SULLIVAN that principle. Whether or not General Motors in the present case is resisting ‘‘collective bargaining” is immaterial here, The fundamental issue can be put in the form of two questions. Are the “sit-downers” trespassers on private property? If they are tres passers, will the courts and agencies of law enforcement eject them?

» ” ”

F the courts should hold the sit down type of strike to be legiti« mate; or if at any point in the chain of law and enforcement there is res fusal to eject the sit-downers; or if the sit-downers successfully resist attempts at ejection: in short, if this sit-down strike is successful in law “or in fact, then a material change, indeed a revolutionary change, will have occurred in seve eral areas. If the sit-down strike is declared legitimate, or if without being legiti« mate it is nevertheless successful, then the sit-down will become the practically universal technique of striking. It is far more effective than any other method, ”n ” » PART from the economic effect, if the sit-down type of strike is sanctioned by the courts, if trespass of this kind is legalized, such a decision would become a legal precedent affecting all kinds of property. It would work a serious reduction in the prerogatives of ownership of every individual every-where--farm owners, home owners or what not. '

atv wo ;

Second Section

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PAGE 13

ur Town

By ANTON SCHERRER

LMOST the only thing that remains une changed since 1 was a boy is Wash Mons day. Seems that everybody is pretty well agreed that it's still the best way to start the week. It’s taken for granted today and that’s why I bring up the subject, because when I was a boy it wasn't at all certain that such a thing as Wash Monday was possible, There was a matter of the

winter months, for instance, when it was well nigh impossible not to have the clothes freeze on the wash=line, And then there was the problem of numbed hands, which interfered greatly with the technique of hanging clothes, Any way you look at it, Wash Mon= day, 50 years ago, was something to sharpen the wits of women, I still remember how the prob= lems were solved, In our houses hold they were solved by Jemima (Gem), Henrietta and Columbine, who, following one another, were the wash=women I remember best. What happened in our household happened all over town, I guess, with the result that Wash Monday is the universal thing it is today, Gem, I remember, came to our house circa 1886, and was in many respects our most competent launs dress. At any rate, it was she who never had her clothes freeze on the Jine, For a long time sha kept her secret to herself, but it finally leaked out, I always suspected that Gem, moved by generosity, gave it away, Anyway, I remember that Gem pub a handful of salt in her rinsewater and that was all there was to it, Which, of eourse, left the problem of the numbed hands to be solved,

» " N Warmed Clothespins

I remained for Henrietta, circa 1803, to do that. She moistened her hands with vinegar, let them dry and then hung out the clothes. It was Henrietta, too, I recall, who warmed the clothess pins in the oven before using them, Columbine came to us at the turn of the century, which is to say that she was pretty sophisticated, At any rate, she knew all the tricks that Gem and Henrietta had thought up and she had some pretty good ones of her own, Columbine, 1 remember, put a tablespoonful of pepper in the first suds to keep the colors from runs ning, and she had an vneanny way of keeping delicate colors from fading by adding a teaspoonful of Epsom salts to each gallon of rinsing water,

» ” ”

Ind,

Mr,

seherrer

Hanging Expert OLUMBINE also knew a lot more about hangs ing out clothes than the other girls did. When washing delicate things, like women wear, Columbine always hung the stockings by the toe, the nighte gowns by the shoulder and the =kirts by the hem. She said that kept them from sagging out of

shape, Columbine’s most spectacular trick, however, was

the washing of blankets. She washed thera in borax

water and, without putting them through a wringer, hung them straight on the line, Then she turned the hose on them. Sure, by that time

we had a hose,

A Woman's View By MRS. WALTER FERGUSON

HE Man Next Door likes his women dumb or natural, as he expresses it. "The ruination of your sex was begun,” he told me, “when we started the girls off to college. Look at them now. They're too high and mighty for homemaking and babies, and they're not half smart enough to compete with men in other fields. On, there are a few exceptions, gl grant you, But they only prove my rule, In the main, modern women are just crowing hens, making a lot of unnecessary noise and neglecting their laying. “Take all your reforms, for instance. So far as § can see you haven't improved politics or economics or manners or morals, The only thing you have done i8 to wreck the American home and turn the country upside down because you have to have a finger in every pie, You've done yourself out of domestic peace and social security, if you call that achievement, “Politics is not in the feminine line. You women have a foolish notion that if the voter has the chance to express himself he will stand for all that is fine and noble. You believe this in spite of statistics which say plainly that millions of visitors to the ballot

| box have the I. Q. of 12=year=olds.

“And the way vou manage to mess up your private lives is beyond all reason. Although you pretend to be moralists, you've substituted multiple marriage for old-fashioned promiscuity, You just call the old things by new names, That's all. And every law designed to protect you has become a menace to society bee cause of feminine racketeering instincts, alimony bes ing the prize example, ' 0

“You smart girls have done yourselves out

| homes—it's the dumb one's who are sitting prettiest

these days!’ What about it, sisters? Do you agree with the Man

| Next Door?

Your Health

By DR. MORRIS FISHBEIN

Editor, American Medical Assn, Journal

OME common terms used in discussing the spread of diseases are not well understood by many peo= ple. Two such terms, for instance, are the words “contagious” and “infectious.” A contagious disease is one that is catching, and usually implies spread by direct or personal contact, since the word “contagious” comes from a word meane ing “to touch.” An Infectious disease usually is one that is not carried directly, but indirectly through some hidden influence. The distinction is really an artificial one, and actually there is no difference, Many infectious diseases are contagious, and vice versa. A better term for them is “communicable dis ease,” which refers to a disease that can be passed from ona person or one animal to another. The most notorious typhoid carrier is a woman known as “Typhoid Mary.” She was a cook in a family for three years, and in 1901 she developed typhoid fever, following a visit to the family by someone who had the disease. A month later the laundress in this family became ill with typhoid fever. In 1002, Mary left her job for a new place, and two weeks after she arrived the laundress in that family had typhoid fever, A week later another pers son became ill and soon seven members of the house hold wera stricken with typhoid, In 1004 Mary secured a job in a Long Island home in which were a family of four, and seven servants, About three weeks after she arrived, four of the servants developed typhoid fever, In 1006 she secured another job, and six of the 11 members of that family developed typhoid. Twa weeks after beginning her next job, a laundress was stricken with typhoid, In 1907 she entered a home in New York City, and two cases developed promptly, one of which proved {atal. In five years “Typhoid Mary” caused 26 cases of typhoid fever, so, in March, 1907, the New York De= partment of Health locked her up. Not much was heard of her again until 1014, when she escaped from observation and secured a job as a cook in a hospital for women in New York City. Two months later an outbreak of typhoid fever occurred in that hospital, affecting principally doce tors and nurses, Twenty-five cases in. all. developed.