Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 3 February 1937 — Page 11
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Vagabond!
FROM INDIANA
ERNIE PYLE
(OKLAHOMA CITY, Feb. 3.-—~Yesterday we wrote about the awful waste of gas in the Oklahoma oil fields. Well, we'll kiss that gas good-by. But what has that got to do with the waste of oil? Here's how that goes:
Oil is way down in the earth in little globules, you know, mixed with the gas. The globules have a tendency to stick to the grains of sand. When the gas pressure is great, and you cock a lot of wells wide open, the gas rushes out with such force that it tears itself away from many of these globules of oil, and leaves them down there. After a few years the gas is nearly all gone and there's not enough pressure left to pull these globules away. So there they stay forever, (The companies do pump 1 oil after the gas is gone, but deep- “» well pumping is very expensive, and wells are abandoned long before they're pumped dry.) You can’t get any definite figures on the total of gas and oil wasted. Under perfect conditions, oil men expect to recover only 70 per cent of the oil. less than half of it out.
u ” ”
Doubt Supplies Will Fail
Yas always hearing talk that our oil supply is limited: that men today can foresee the time when it will all be gone. Well, despite the waste, yes and no.
Mr, Pyle -
The known deposits of cil in the United States to-
day total between 10 and 13 billion barrels. We are using oil at the rate of a billion barrels a year. Offhand, that would mean our oil supply would be exhausted in 13 years. That isn’t actually true. Because as fields get older they produce slower, and toward the end of the 13 years we couldn't get up a billion gallons a year. Some of the fields that are flush now won't be entirely dry for 40 or 50 years. So we'll still have oil 40 years from now, but we won't have nearly enough, unless new fields are discovered. And nobody doubts that within the next 13 years many big new fields will be found.
And there's still another ace in the hole. That's “shale oil.” The Rocky Mountains are full of shale oil. Geologists know it. But it is oil in rock, rather than in sand, and the price of getting it out will be so high that it won't be touched until all other oil is
gone. = on ”n
Conservation Practiced
S anything being done about this awful waste of gas and oil? Sure. Some things. The oil companies themselves are getting out more oil through more efficient engineering. And Oklahoma and Texas have their conservation laws. They have their oil production limitations, and their tax structures on oil and gas, and some statutes about the spacing of wells and so on. In fact the situation is many times better than it was six or eight years ago. But it’s hard to apply anything with much force. As the man on the Tax Commission said, by the time we get a thorough conservation system there won't be anything left to conserve. Looking backward, before the milk was spilled, what could we have done? Well, many people feel that mineral and oil resources should belong to all the people, rather than just the lucky ones who happen to own the top of the ground. They feel that the Government should take these resources in the name of all the people, and operate the oil business.
Only in that way could the waste be avoided, they |
say
Mrs.Roosevelt's Day |
By ELEANOR ROOSEVELT WwW ASHINGTON, Tuesday—This morning has been a morning packed full of interesting contacts. First of all, Dr. Louise Stanley of the Department of Agriculture asked me to see a young Japanese woman,
Miss Yamamuro, a newspaper correspondent who is over here studying American home conditions and schools for her magazine.
She brought me a copy of the magazine, which |
is the oldest woman's magazine in Japan, The illustrations are like our own but I was unable to read the text. She seemed to feel quite keenly that it is a pity we do not read Japanese in this country. She asked me what I thought important for our women and I told her that that was rather a complicated thing to talk about, but that I would tell her what I felt were ultimate objectives which all women everywhere were interested in today. First and foremost the preservation of peace, and secondly the improvement in the standards of living where that standard is so low that it makes it impossible for people to lead a normal, healthy, happy existence. The reason that I set peace first is that it is certainly an impossibility to do anything about the improvement in living conditions when one is involved in war. Then Mrs. Tullis, a very charming woman who is here in the interests of International House in Geneva, came to lunch. She told me what a wonderful opportunity that House gives to students.from all over the world. Then a group of women who are interested in women’s participation in the New York World's Fair which is to take place in 1939, came to talk a little about their ideas of what this fair may mean, Mrs. Vincent Astor and Miss Monica Walsh are working on this and hope to get committees in every state. Yesterday afternoon, Mrs. William Denman, who is deeply interested in San Francisco's World Fair which also is to take place in 1839, came to tell me
about the plans she is developing for showing the | history of Indian culture in the United States and |
the other American countries at the San Francisco fair. It seems to me that the two fairs on opposite sides of the American continent might develop some plans co-operatively which would dovetail into each other and make a trip to both fairs extremely worth while,
New Books
PUBLIC LIBRARY PRESENTS—
ROM the rolling hills of the Ohio to the emerald river Bou Regreg, flowing below the orange bat= tlements of the Moroccan city of Rabat, is a long way. Countess de Chambrun, born Clara Longworth in Cincinnati, in SHADOWS LIKE MYSELF (Scribner), the memoirs of an extraordinary life fully, deeply and courageously lived, tells the story of this journey.
Here are enchanting glimpses of French family life; views of heart-breaking war years, when the young wife, one morning, slipped away from St. Mihiel to the front, to stand beside the man she loved for a few precious moments, marvelling at the sinister beauty of bursting shells. Here are records of diplomatic and military life in many capitals, the deep and satisfying rewards of scholarship, the dangerously interesting service “Under the Crescent” during Riffian border troubles. In the intervals while trailing about the world, the girl frem Cincinnati found time to rear a family, read, write, study, play bridge and golf, and preside graci=ously over some 13 different homes which she established. Now at 62, Countess de Chambrun writes history in the story of those significant years. High-lighted by momentous events, the tale is told with an admirable restraint. ” ” = S a bachelor Ggden Nash was once famous for his cynical attitude toward children and their parents. Now, from the angle of a devoted parent, he writes one of his most amusing books, THE BAD PARENTS’ GARDEN OF VERSE (Simon & Schuster). Some of the poems included we recognize from their first appearance in the New Yorker, the Saturday Evening Post, and other magazines. entertained by “Machinery Doesn't Answer Either, but You Aren't Married to It”;
by Reginald Birch, add greatly to the gelight of the veader, » *
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The Indianapolis Times
Second Section
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1937
Entered
as Second-Class Matter et Postoffice, Indianapolis,
PAGE 11
Ind.
They are actually getting much |
We were especially
“Remembrance of | Things to Come,” and ‘The Stork.” The illustrations,
FLOODS MUST AND CAN BE TAMED Dams and Levees Futile Unless Misuse of Land Is A bated, Experts Say
(Sixth of a Series)
By BENTON J. STONG Times Special Writer
ILLIONS and billions of dollars may be poured into
public works to prevent floods— Levees may be piled ever higher along the Lower Mis-
sissippi—
An endless chain of dams and spillways may be con-
structed—
But the problem of disastrous floods in the Mississippi Valley will never be solved without a national program of
proper land use.
This, in substance, was the finding of both the Mississippi Valley Committee and the Water Planning Committee of the National Resources Board when, in their 1934 reports, they urged a billion dollar program for reforestation and soil-erosion control throughout the 31 states drained by the Father of Waters and its tributaries.
Floods, despite their dramatic aspects, are but one small item in the list of losses chargeable to misuse of land.
The tangible loss of soil values is annually 15 to 20 times as great as the damage done by floods. One-fourth of the nation’s cultivable lands already have been destroved by the same ercsion which fills flood-control reservoirs with silt and which eventually will defeat the highest levee system.
PJ HE rapid runoff of water from overcultivated lands, which causes floods, has at the same time contributed to the depletion of ground water supplies in farm areas until the Mississippi Valley Committee found the existence of self-sustaining agriculture threatened. “So serious is the loss of topsoils and of ground surface moisture that continuance at the present rate for another century would jeopardize the very existence of a self-sustaining agriculture in the United States,” the committee wrote. “The progressive washing away of the topsoil from the best farm lands represents altogether most serious aspect of erosion. The topsoil, which on many acres averages only 7 to 8 inches in depth, may be worn away in from 25 to 50 years. This is a small period in the life of a nation. “H. H. Bennett, director of the U. S. Soil Erosion Service, estimates that already 125 million acres now under cultivation have lost all or most of the productive surface soil by sheet erosion. The Joss of plant nutrients by erosion also reaches staggering figures.
the |
The final destruction of land for agriculture is accomplished by gully erosion.
2 ” ”
" N increase of runoff caused by erosion is followed by a reduction in the proportion of the rainfall which seeps into the ground and reaches streams by underground channels. This is reflected by lowered dry-weather streams and rivers. “One of the most serious consequences of erosion is the loading of streams with silt. It is estimated that each year fully 1.5 billion tons of soil are moved from the cultivated fields of the country, a considerable portion of which reaches the streams and larger rivers.” Recent studies have indicated that as much as 35 per cent of silt is deposited in the channels of rivers. The Appalachian Forest Experiment Station, launched in 1933, has just reported that sand and silt borne down inadequately vegetated mountain slopes rapidly is choking streams and creating flood dangers in western North Carolina, where slopes are even greater than in the Mississippi Valley. " n ” HIS vast reservoir, essential to the growing of crops and probably many times as important as man-built reservoirs can ever become in holding back flood waters, can only be restored by a land-use program, the Water Planning Committee found. “Lowering of ground-water levels in the superficial groundwater zone has undoubtedly taken place more or less extensively,” the committee reported. “It appears certain that this lowering has in general been more
Represents $50,000,000 to be expended an d chargeable to power development.
The location of projects suggested by the Mississippi Valley Committee in its billion-dollar program, &ivided among the three major divisions of the Great Valley, are shown in this map taken from the report.
7
Represents Represents _ $50,000,000 {i n $50,000,000 1 n _ projects charge- projects chargeable to naviga- able to flood control, Totty,
tion.
Represents $50,000,000 chargeable to irrigation.
AVERAGE ANNUAL FLOOD LOSSES .
PRESENT ANNUAL EROSION LOSSES
FLOOD AND EROSION DAMAGE IN THE MISSISSIPPI BASIN _WEST OF THE RIVER
EACH COMPLETE D15C:¥20000000
G0000000006000
This chart from the Mississippi repert shows the comparatively
floods in the past compared to the soil erosion losses
River Committee | west of the Mississippi.
small loss from
commonly the result of the periods of low rainfall, of overintensive agriculture, and improper methods of cultivation and use of land, rather than because of overdraft of water from wells. “Restoration of ground-water levels and conservation of the ground-water resources in the superficial zone can be brought about only through methods of cultivation and use of land which permit the normal amount of water to enter the soil as infiltration and which prevent soil moisture being withdrawn in excess by crops or otherwise.”
NEXT—Looking toward solu-
tion of land-use problems,
Criticism for Secretary Roper |s Forecast
By ROBERT W. HORTON
Times Special Writer
; vented from even selecting its own | appointees; that it didn't seem to
ASHINGTON, Feb. 3—A | know what its own budget require-
storm is brewing around Secretary of Commerce Roper be-
cause of his failure to reorganize the Bureau of Air Commerce, which is responsible for safety in aviation. Influential Senators are increasingly bitter at what they regard as Roper’s defiance of the Senate Comnierce Committee report on the crash that killed Senator Rronson Cutting on May 6, 1935. In that report, the committee upheld charges that the Bureau of Air Cecmmerce was deplorably administered; that the Bureau was pre-
| ments were, and
that “personnel and financial control is outside the Bureau.” 4 oo» HIS put the responsibility directly on Roper. The report concluded with the statement that “we strongly recommend to the Secretary of Commerce that he thoroughly overhaul the Bureau of Air Commerce with a view to improving its administrative officials.” These recommendations were made on June 20. To date, no important changes have been made in
the administrative setup of the Burean by Secretary Roper. Meanwhile air liners continue to crash and charges accumulate that inefficiency and mismanagement in the Bureau play a part in raising the toll of life. Since the crackup which killed Martin Johnson, the explorer, the Department has said that steps will be taken to improve the Bureau's supervision of airline safety. But indications at the Capitol are that the whole subject will once more be thrown open to a Senate investigation, with much less senatorial reluctance than before to “go to bat” with the Commerce Department.
TODAY'S LOCAL PERSONALITY
By JACK MORANZ
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|Precipitation and the Hydrologic Cycle Rain, Snow, Hul, Bic aE re a ;
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and Atowispheric Vapors X=
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EVAPORATION
Transpiration biter possing Hoaugh wil, rons ong drink
This chart shows what becomes of rainfall; how on vegetated lands some evaporates back into the air without touching the land, some is taken up by the vegetation and more is permitted to filter into the ground and refill ground water reservoirs. All these actions, retarding the run-off, are lost when the land is stripped of vegetation. Instead of retarding run-off, the denuded lands add a burden of silt to rushing waters.
Roosevelt Cool ‘to Minton Court Plan, Sullivan Says
By MARK SULLIVAN
ASHINGTON, Feb. 3.—~What, White House toaay that Senator President Roosevelt is likely | Minton went there to get the Presto do with respect to the Supreme | ident’s indorsement on a bill which Court and the Constitution is im-|would prohibit the Supreme Court portant among current questions— | from holding an act of Congress unmany think the most important. SORE al Opa: Riles even 2A the nine justices vote to do so. Senator Mo ne pi mie Sherman Minton did not get the indorsement White House and spent nearly an he sought, it was definitely stated. hour with Mr. Roosevelt. Senator Instead, he was advised that the
tant Attorney General was studying Minton has a proposal {1 limit de- . cisions of the Supreme Court. He methods of adapting invalidated
would have Congress enact that a Bh aoe Srpreme d Souris {law can be held unconstitutional would probably be a good idea if he only when at least seven of nine | .,.q (he Attorney General would [Justices unite in saying it is. come to the White House some time 2 2 =» and go over those studies. It was | HEN Senator Minton ended | made clear that the White House is visit wi : was not giving any encouragement | is Visit) Mita the President, to individual legislators to seek acje was Guesiloneu by Rewspapsys tion against the Supreme Court men. Just inside the door of the | nth) tac had time to adjust itself office any 07 the White House is a to the popular will, as President | small room in which some half Roosevelt indicated he hoped it » dozen correspondents Keep Watch.| wo.i4 in his annual message to Their custom is to waylay callers Congress.” who have just been with the Presi- 8 % dent and ask them what was discussed. Sometimes the caller is eager to be waylaid, Commonly he has some project he wishes to promote and welcomes the opportunity to get publicity by saying he discussed his project with the President. Sometimes, unless the President has shouted “No, no, no,” the caller is prone to give the impression that the President agreed with him. Senator Minton appears to have done none of these things. He was known to favor a measure to limit the Supreme Court and Senator Minton had called at the White House. The newspapermen asked him if he had discussed this matter with the President. Hg said he had. The newspapermen asked other questions, and Senator Minton was quoted as saying “the President told me he would call a conference.”
” ” ” OW what can be inferred from the whole episode? First, we know that the President is not planning any limitation on the Supreme Court. Second, he is not planning any amendment to the Constitution —we know that from his direct statement in his message to Con-
gress. What, then, is the President planning? On that question there is light in one passage from the White House disavowal: “The Attorney General was studying methods of adapting invalidated acts to the Supreme Court opinions.” This is an
evidence to support it. That is the real meat of this whole situation. The President is pursuing his obJectives, but he is pursuing them by rewriting the legislation and otherwise following a course which is within the Constitution and which takes account of the Court's objections. 1S But there is, in last week's inci dent, further inference about the President's attitude. He is not - ning any legislation about the Court nor any amendment to the Constitution, but he is willing to ree others plan such proposals and agitate about them. The more of that sort of thing, the more the Supreme Court is was preparing to ask for legislation | likely to observe public pressure for to curb the Supreme Court's power,” |a modified interpretation of the the story read. “It was said at the Constitution, : ot
” ” ”
HIS secined to be news in an important and highly contro- | versial field. The following day, after the morning papers were out, one of the President’s secretaries sent for the newspapermen. “The White House denied with considerable forcefulness today suggestions that President Roosevelt
important. statement. There is other.
Our Town
By ANTON SCHERRER
POINT that future historians will
ponder is the unique importance of “casual clothes” in the life of present-day America. I've spent a good deal of time lately wondering what in the world our de-
partment stores mean by it. Indeed, I've triea to get to the bottom of the whole business be= cause, apparently, there is a lot more to it than appears on the surface.
For one thing, the problem embraces more than clothes, It includes the wearing of clothes. There's no mistaking it, because the advertisements come right out and say that clothes will be worn “casually” this winter—not indifferently, or carelessly, or nonchalantly, you understand, but “casually.” So will furs, if the! weather man ever gets around to giving the women a break. But the problem goes even farther than that. Unless I mistake the signs of the times, it includes eating and drinking, too. Indeed, I've got to the point now that I believe it includes everything, and that it's the very thing that distinguishes the present generation from the one I was brought up in, At any rate, I never knew any people who behaved “casually” when I was a kid. To be sure, we had our share of indifferent and careless people, even none chalant people, but certainly no casual people. The fact of the matter is, that in my day people went out of Wese way not to appear casual, At least, the wome en did.
Mr. Scherrer
” on ” They Couldn't Appear Casual
I sure of it because, when I was a kid, the women went to an awful lot of trouble dressing up. The styles, I remember ran to “smallness” and called for high, tight-laced corsets, tight kid gloves and shoes several sizes too small. To negotiate these small sizes, a woman couldn't appear casual. What's more, she didn’t want to if she could, because, once having gotten into her clothes, it always struck me, she didn’t want anybody to be indifferent to the fact. It was that way about eating and drinking, too. I still remember how the women used to stew when seized with the notion of throwing a party. They stewed for weeks in advance, getting ready for the event, and they stewed all the time the varty was in progress for fear the guests wouldn't appreciate the trouble they had gone to. Indeed, the greatest compliment one could pay a hostess when I was a kid was to tell her she had gone to a lot of trouble.
Maybe They Don’t Stew Now
ELL, apparently, women don't stew any more. They're “casual” about it now, and the way they behave makes it appear that everything connected with their clothes and parties is something more or less accidental—at any rate, without design. I guess it's all right, but I sometimes wonder where it’s going to end. Carried to its logical conclusion, it means the end of the world, because I can't conceive of a healthy state of society without the women stewing about something. :
A Woman's View
By MRS. WALTER FERGUSON
Lions are fond of calling our attention to the
fact that automobile crashes have killed as many people in the United States as were lost in all our wars. “Eventually,” they say, “there can be no neutrals in the fight against such peacetime slaughter. The people must be consciously divided between the killers and the nonkillers.” Every person with a grain of sense agrees. And may we add that in the future there can also be no neutrals in the fight against wartime slaughter. There too some day we shall separate the killers from the nonkillers. We are all of a notion to put the steering-wheel murderer behind prison bars. If there's anything in the analogy, isn't it equally sensible to regard the instigators of war as similar enemies to the well= being and lives of our community? They are all in the same class; fools riding down their fellows on the highways and on the battlefields. If the careless driver deserves life imprisonment, the war-monger ought to be hanged. Somehow the advocates of capital punishment have overlooked these rascals. People must be made to pay for their crimes, so they say. Well, what happens to the fellows who promote war and commit wholesale murder? Nothing much. They generally live to a respectable old age covered with glory and medals. Seldom do they expire in their own well-planned campaigns. . The real victims die with only the haziest notions of what they are dying for. In line with the present proposals for reorganizae tion of the Federal Government, the bill recently introduced by Congressman Boileau ought to be studied. It proposes to combine the Army and Navy into a single Department of National Defense which would be used for defense only, thus fulfilling our commitments of the General Pact for the Renunciae tion of War, ratified by the Senate Jan. 15, 1929, which rencunces war as an instrument of national policy. This bill sounds so good it will probably never be passed. We protest at being kilied by careless drivers, but the war-mongers can ride over us rough-shod. We decorate them for it.
Your Health By DR. MORRIS FISHBEIN
Editor, American Medical Assn. Journal
OST of the common infectious diseases are caused by germs which get into the body and then begin their action. The period that elapses be= tween the time when the germ first enters and when the person begins to show disease symptoms is known as the incubation period.
This time varies with different diseases. In mene ingitis, it is from two to four days; in erysipelas, from one-half to three days; in measles, from 10 days to two weeks; in German measles, from five to 21 days; in scarlet fever, from Several hours to a week: in smallpox, from 10 days to two weeks; in typhoid fever, from six to 25 days, and, in chickenpox, from four to 16 days. Few people really know what germs look like or how they invade the human body. Germs are so small that it takes 300,000,000,000 to weigh a pound. They multiply rapidly under favorable conditions.
One germ can produce two new ones in 20 minute If a germ produces two new ones every hour, it woul have at the end of a day millions of descendants,
We recognize disease germs by their presence at the time of disease and their absence when the disease is not present. In contrast, we recognize vitamins by the disease that appears when the vitamins are abe sent.
Germs are of many shapes and sizes; some are round, some rodshaped, some spiral. Some have cap= sules made of wax or fat, and others have tails fins. Germs are not a theory, because they can hé seen under the microscope, ed When germs are injected into animals, they cause changes in the tissue and are found to be widesp J throughout the animal's body, whereas only a smal number had been placed under the creature’s skin into its blood vessel with the first injection, Changes that take place are specific for of germ. j The germs can be grown human body. If it is injec
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