Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 29 March 1937 — Page 11
4
Vagabond
FROM INDIANA
ERNIE PYLE
EW YORK, March 29.—In my role of one who eventually gets around to everything 1 have at last seen “Tobacco Road,” now in its fourth year on Broadway. It impressed me as being quite a good play. It opened in New York on Dec. 4, 1933—
the night before repeal. Only three of the original 11 are still in the cast. Some are dead;
others have left for other shows. The three originals are Ruth Hunter as Ellie May, the hairlipped Lester girl; Edwin Walter as the Banker, who is on the stage about three minutes, and Ashley Cooper as Peabody, one of Jeeter’'s ighbors. She play, as you doubtless know, is the simple and ugly story of a few days in the horribly true lives of the Jeeter Lester family— poor starving white trash of the Georgia. tobacco country. “Tobacco Road” is now in second place for the all-time Broadway record run. It passed “Lightnin’” last December. They have high hopes for it overtaking “Abie’s Irish Rose,” but it has a long way to go. For while “Tobacco Road” has now been through approximately 1450 performances on Broadway, “Abie” piled up 2532. : en But there's no sign of “Tobacco Road” dwindling away soon. They thought it was dying last summer. But then it took on new life, and the night I went there were just a few empty seats. The audience now is an entirely different type from what it was three years ago. Today they are getting the subway crowds who never go to anything but movies. The price is down to £1.65 top. The play's fame has become so great that practically everybody who comes to New York from the hinterlands goes to see it. They also get schoolteachers in great droves. Just why, they don't know, n n u
Star Felt Terrible FTER the show I went around behind and talked A with James Barton, the star. He felt terrible. Had a bad cold that kept him coughing all the time. Couldn’t go home and rest for a day or two, because he has no understudy. ] Barton has played Jeeter close to 900 times. Says he feels as if Jeeter's a real person now. He'll be sorry when the role is finally over. Barton works on a percentage basis and pulls down, they say, from $1000 to $1200 a week. In real life he cusses just like Jeeter. Barton said he felt so bad he couldn't think of anything interesting to tell me about the show. But the others dug up some statistics, which have probably been printed before, but I never saw them and maybe you haven't either. For example, the turnips:
» un td
Cast Fats Dozen Turnips
OV BENSEY comes a-totin’ in a sack of turnips. There are about 20 in the sack, and the cast actually eats about a dozen each performance. The property man has to go out and buy turnips every other day. They keep them on ice backstage. In winter they're shipped from Florida. turnips have been used since the play opened. The stage is covered with red dirt, and it has to be replenished now and then.
over in Jersey, and the town is ashamed of it and
doesn’t like for people to know where it comes from. |
They've used 225 crumpled auto fenders, and 40
pounds of salt pork (they do this just for fun, be- |
cause the pork is in a cloth sack and you never see it, and they could just as well use boards).
They hope to keep it going here until 1939, then | convert it into an operetta, with the Lester family
dancing through their roles.
Mrs. Roosevelt's Day
By ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
ASHINGTON, Sunday—Yesterday was an exciting day at the White House. The President was coming home and that meant everybody was on his toes. After getting everything ready for his return, my grandson, Bill, and I went down to the train to meet him. I am afraid Bill was more interested in whether the train would be a “puff-puff,” than in the fact that he was going to see his grandfather, whom he had not seen for some time. When the train finally came in, he was much excited at going on board, but still wished to be taken up to examine the engine. I had to impress upon him that we could not keep his grandfather waiting. Sara came down also to meet her mother and we all drove up from the station together. . Without even waiting for a few minutes conversation, the President plunged into meetings of all kinds as soon as he reached the White House. I felt a little guilty at being carefree enough to go out on the bridle path again, and I really think my horse recognized my voice and was glad to have me back. In the afternoon some friends arrived to spend Easter with us. Miss Helen Reynolds from Poughkeepsie, came to go over some historical records with the President; Mr. and Mrs. William Dana and Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Adophe from Bear Mountain, N. Y,, were other guests. Mr. and Mrs. Julian Bryan brought down their pictures of Turkey. These Turkish pictures are extremely interesting, for they show what has been done in a very few years to change a country, which had remained apparently untouched by modern days or machinery, into a mechanized nation. Let us hope that it will mean greater happiness for the people. Mrs. Scheider and I as usual, attended the Knights Templar Easter Sunrise Memorial Service at the Arlington National Cemetery at 7:30 this morning. Perhaps you thought this was spring in Washington, but I can assure you that winter is still with us and we needed two robes from the car to keep us warm. The minister even requested all the gentlemen to keep their hats on because the wind was blowing lustily around us.
PUBLIC LIBRARY PRESENTS— Azan and indomitable city is the background for Julian Dana's THE MAN WHO BUILT SAN FRANCISCO (Macmillan). In this book we learn not quite so much about that city as about William Ralston, the almost legendary figure who, between 1851 and 1875, gave it his complete devotion. The account of the early town is particularly entertaining—a San Francisco with streets so bad that in the rainy season some citizen placed the sign: : “This street is impassable— “Not even jackassable.” Ralston was arbiter on the Pacific coast. He controlled the Bank of California; he was in the North Pacific Fur Co.; he built the famous Palace Hotel. Banks, mines, railroads, lovely Louisa Thorne,
Elizabeth Reed, and Adelaide Neilson were all a part of his vigorous life.
Ld » u
O you live on a budget: 20 to 25 per cent for housing, 8 to 15 per cent for house operation, 25 per cent for food, 12 to 15 per cent for clothing, a praiseworthy 5 per cent in savings, and for advancement not more than 15 per cent? This last group gives us pause, since it curbs our dearest activities, the car. our vacation, personal expenses and obversely that appendicitis operation. “How to use money intelligently” subtitles a valuable guide to perplexing problems, MANAGING PERSONAL FINANCES, by David F. Jordan (Prentice-Hall). The author New York University professor of finance, was formerly an economist for the General Electric Co., and is eminently well fitted to discuss the value of money, business cycles, sensible investment in depression and prosperity periods, credit and installment buying, borrowing, home ownership vs. renting, annuities, pension plans, bank accounts, setting oneself up in business, making the will, and many other guestions which confuse
the unwary in the every day business of buying,
selling and saving. \
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So far about 50 tons | of earth have been used. They get it near a town |
| was set.
MONDAY, MARCH 29, 1987
Entered as Second-Class Matter Indianapolis,
at Postoffice,
SAFETY AND AIRPLANE TRAVEL
Planes Not as Hazardous as One M ight T' hink, Crash Survey Shows
By NEA SERVICE
N a revulsion of horror at a spectacular plane crash like that of the T. & W. A. plane near Pittsburgh, March 25, people jump to two conclusions: First, that the pilot is the unique source of danger, and that
the air is unsafe. Yet neither conclusion is justified, Fortune Magazine finds after analysis of a careful compilation of all the commercial air accidents that have ever taken place in the United States. The magazine, summing up its findings on air travel in its April issue, finds that: Commercial air travel in best years is safer than the private automobile in its worst years. The bus is safer than either. And all forms of transportation
vainly are shooting at the safety |
marks achieved by the railroads. From Jan. 1, record of commercial scheduled air line travel begins, up to but not including the crash of March 25, 1937, United States commercial air lines have suffered 846 accidents on scheduled domestic operations,
nn 4 ® F these 846 accidents, there were 674 in which no one was seriously injured. Only 107 accidents killed someone in the plane. And of these, 49 occurred on flights. The total death toll is 325, and
Crews, Thus in 10 years, 58 fatal crashes have killed 194 passengers. That averages between five and six crashes a year, and slightly more than three passenger deaths per crash. The most complete figures, however, are from 1930-1936. In that period the air lines flew 1,428,250,000 passenger miles. (If a plane flies 100 miles with 10 passengers, that is 1000 passenger miles.) Of the total passengers carried, .004 per cent were killed. Exactly one . ssenger was Killed for every 2,000,000 miles of flight. And the 1930-1936 mortality was one passenger for every 9,350,000 passenger miles,
” " ” ATAL plane accidents, reaching a peak of 18 in 1929, declined to eight in 1934 and have stayed there. But passenger fatalities have been rising because planes are jarger and more pas-
sengers are carried on each flight.
The result was the deadly year for passenger plane accidents in 1936 when a new high record of 61 deaths (44 of them passengers) In 1933 the air lines set a new all-time high of 21,700,000 passenger miles for each passenger death, but in 1936 the figure had been cut down to 9,900,000, though there were no more bad crashes. The railroads, worst days back
even in their in 1907, with
its |
1927, when the |
| sengers. | same year
| 42,800,000 passenger | each passenger death, which
nonpassenger |
ACCIDENTS on Domestic Scheduled Airlines
1927~1036
Nonfatal accidents —— £3 9
Fatal accidents
on
The
Magazine graphs. (graph at left)
planes carry hence crashes are
=
—By Courtesy Fortune Magazine.
whole story of commercial plane fatalities is quickly told by these Fortune Note how have been practically the same for four years, but how deaths (second graph) suddenly rose in 1936, because more passengers now, more deadly. mathematical chances in flying are shown in the third graph, at right.
| FATALITIES from Accidents
on Domestic Scheduled Airlines 1027~10306
Employee fatalities — 3
accidents
and Your
RATES of ACCIDENTS in Domestic Scheduled
Airline Operation 1927~1036
WM
. . - . . * a . 4 * * . . > - ~-v - - . . . - Ru . - . y
Passenger fatalities—— HR
| 1927-29
Passenger fatalities per 10 million pas-senger-miles (figures for
Accig, oes gy
ilable) 7
|
oo
esd NV
illion -= ta Wniles flown Tieden]
wooden cars and high-speed com-
petitive schedules, killed 647 pasBut they rolled up the 27,700,000,000 passenThis made a rate of miles for is twice as good as the best the air lines have been able to achieve. In the year ending June 30,
ger miles.
of these 131 were members of | L039 the railroads killed only 18
passengers. The rate of 1,027,000,000 passenger miles for each passenger death is the all-time record for all transportation. ” ” ” N the record of the last four years (the period of strictly modern flight) you could have traveled 16,000,000 miles on air lines without getting killed, which is just about as far as you can figure on traveling in your own car before you get killed. Fortune has analyzed, one by one, all the principal air crashes since that in which Senator Bronson Cutting was killed near Atlanta, Mo., May 6, 1935. So far as is known, it concludes, structural failure of the aircraft itself has not caused a single modern fatal accident, which reflects plenty of credit on U. S. manufacturers and maintenance shops. If plane line operators have in the past urged pilots to make risky flights, they are not doing so any longer, the survey concludes.
PMiot error contributed to 10 of the major crashes in the past two years, the survey found. Faulty radio reception appears to have entered into six of them. Lack of gas has figured in several. Faulty or insufficient weather forecasts were factors in four of the crashes. 1n several cases the operators have blamed the Government radio beam as being weak or having failed, but this has not been established definitely. Part of the responsibility rests
on the Government,
the survey finds. Since 1932, the Government's tangible contribution to improving the airways has been only $3,200,000. That does not include money spent on improving airports, for this is not much of a safety factor,
” n ” OMMERCIAL operators have for several years been asking
| new airways equipment totaling | $10,500,000, Fortune points out, in-
| cluding new
radio ranges or
{ beams, hundreds of new nondirectional markers, extended tele-
type service. The number of spotweather reporting services should be doubled, the magazine suggests, and the entire Weather Bureau modernized and improved. Flying equipment, the ships themselves, furnished by the operators, are the best in the world. But the airways facilities maintained by the Government are mediocre, Fortune finds, and the unbalance between the effectiveness of these two elements in flying is the basic factor in the airsafety equation today. Better co-operation among air
| lines in research, especially in the
radio field and in blind flying
| technique and equipment, is sug- | gested. Better pay and training
| Fortune | dents
of pilots might help. “The evidence shows clearly,” concludes, “that accibecome obsolete, which means that their causes are being progressively eliminated; and so long as this healthy situation exists it is certain that accident prevention will some day catch up with that advance in performance that has beeen constantly creating new safety problems. “At the present rate of progress, most of the nonhuman causes of today's accidents will have been eliminated in three or four years.”
SOCIALISTS RULE LONDON AS CITY PREPARES FOR CORONATION
By NEA SERVICE ONDON, March 29.—King George VI, monarch of the world’s lordliest empire, will be crowned next May in a Socialist metropolis. For London, hub of the British Empire, not only confirmed but greatly strengthened its Socialist control of local affairs in municipal - elections the other day and reinstated darkhaired, bespectacled Herbert Morrison, Labor Party ace, as majority leader of the London County Council. Judging by results, three out of every five London voters voted Socialist. They did this despite the rampant protests of the mighty Tory political machine, the Press Lords, the nobility, the big property owners, and the financiers. Virulent “Red-baiting” and scareheads in every newspaper in London except one Labor and two Liberal dailies failed to prevent the triumphant return of Morrison as
| “Prime Minister of London.”
” ” ”
HE London County Council administers most of the affairs of the huge agglomeration of people known as Greater London—more than eight millions. This body is elected by the citizenry every three years. Ever since it had been created, the “L. C. C.” as it is commonly known, had been an appanage of the Tory Party. Even as late as 1931 the Municipal Reformers, as the Tories call themselves in this body, had 83 members to 35 for Labor. That is when Morrison got busy. He organized a real militant Socialist Labor Party for London, with the result that, to the surprise of the nation, in 1934 Labor captured the L. C. C. with 69 seats to 55 for Municipal Reformers. The triumphant Socialists chose Morrison as their leader. He is militant. He is energetic and he has vision. ; He committed the L. C. C.—over the dead bodies, so to speak, of the Municipal Reformers—to a program of slum clearance, more parks, forming a green belt around London, more playing fields for the children, more and better schools and more hospital accommodations.
AME the election of 1937. Morrison led his hosts to battle, pointing to the things accomplished and asking for another three years to complete the work. The Tories poured their army into London dis-
Herbert Morrison . . . looks like a fighter even when speaking.
canvassed the voters. The Tory Party organization poured money into the campaign for meetings and other necessary expenses. Prime Minister Baldwin sent the voters a “last word,” asking them to beat the Labor Party. Others in his Cabinet, Tory and National Liberal as well, made appeals. The solid Tory press beat the big drum. The old “Red” bogey was trotted out, the Rothermere papers especially shrieking about Communists, although Morrison had publicly repudiated ahy co-operation with the Reds. In the last week, the Tory press saig that only “General Apathy” could win for the Labor Party. It therefore besought the people to turn out at the polls. They did. More of them voted than ever Pefore dn a municipal
Ge - =
i
record within x b.
election in London. Net result: Labor, 75 members, Municipal Reformers, 49. The Laborites increased their majority in the L. C. C. from 14 to 26 and this in a period in Europe's history when fascism seems to flourish. But Morrison cleverly, in his campaign, pushed home the point that his party had no truck either with bolshevism, communism or fascism.
» ” ”
Clapper Urges Public Men Be Bit More Consistent
By RAYMOND CLAPPER Times Special Writer
| graceful
| Ashurst to state, without fear
skeleton hidden
HE capital of the empire will be |
in the hands of his friends for the next three years. He himself will be the leader. Prophets are already saying that some day the Labor Premier of London will be
the Labor Premier of Great Britain. Aged 48, he is one more example |
of the kind of man Britain is increasingly placing in the fore, just as a similar brand of self-made man comes to the front in the United States. He is a real Cockney, born within sound of Bow Bells. He only g0t an elementary school education. en he was in rapid succession, errand boy, shop clerk, telephone operator and zirculation manager of a small paper. y He got interested joined the Labor party, founded the Labor party of London, became Mayor of the London Borough of Hackney and Labor member of the Sot Ri for Hackney. He . In of Too e Labor Government Minister out a scheme of transport in in use.
in politics,
for the management London which is still
—————————
HEARD IN CONGRESS
Rep. Maury Maverick
ns of the American Revolution. 1 a be a D. A. R. if I were a lady. do not think that is anything against me or anything for me. » = Rep. Luther —The gentlemen predicted that the Sunshine of Prosperity was about to burst upon us through the passage
of that bill (the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act of 1930). s
" " ®
Rep. Frank Crowther (R. N, Y.)= That is right . . . It js dangerous to prophesy. . . . I think there ought to be a law or a rule of the House providing that you cannot quote the on another member except 30 days after he has made a
(D. Tex.)— | If we are going to put this on a basis |
of patrioti POSters, | ge adotic societies, I belong to the |
he was in the Cabinet as of Transport and worked |
|
A. Johnson (D. Tex.) |
|
ASHINGTON, March 29.—A dash of inconsistency is the spice of politics. Life would be dull, indeed, here in Washington if it were not sprinkled with embarrassing inconsistencies, if nobody ever was caught erawling under the fence. People would lose interest in public affairs and it would be a sad day in our national life.
Thus we all owe a debt to such acrobats as Senator Ashurst because he took the lead in supporting the Roosevelt court plan only eight days after he had declared that packing the Supreme Court was “reckless folly.” It was this feat that enabled Senator of successful contradiction, his claim that “nobody can change his mind
| quicker than I.”
Politicians here go around with the shadow of the past hanging over them. Rare is the man who can rise on the Senate floor serene in the knowledge that nowhere in all the world is there a scrap of paper, a letter, a speech, a vote which could rise up to plague him. There's a in almost every Senator’s coat pocket. Even Roosevelt does not escape having his own words come echoing back to argue with him weeks, months, or years later.
un ”
T such time the squirming victim usually falls back upon Emerson’s principle that a “foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” and struts off pretending not to hear the chuckles in the audience. We allow politicians this license of inconsistency not because it is the privilege of great minds but in return for the entertainment provided thereby, although in the case of the Supreme Court neither consideration is involved, the Court indulging in its inconsistencies as a constitutional prerogative. But while we allow this license to politicians, there are limits. The privilege is supposed to be exer-
="
cised within reason. Perhaps there should be a deadline, or a standstill
period, during which ga public man
should not be allowed to change his
position. After all, they are not supposed to jump around so fast as to make us dizzy. This restriction ought especially
| | | | | |
| |
| { |
to apply to Presidents because it would tend to reduce confusion among their supporters. When Jim Watson was Republican State leader, he used to have trouble with Hoover, and on one occasion he said that he wanted to stand behind the President if the President would just stand still long enough so he could. He was getting, he said, St. Vitus’ dance. ” ” n
NLESS President Roosevelt watches out, his followers may be similarly afflicted. In his message on reorganizing the Court, the President dealt with the subject of aged justices, “a subject of delicacy and yet one which required frank discussion.” He put up a strong
argument against being saddled with old men of 70 and clamored for younger men of “full energies” and to whom new facts had not been blurred by old glasses, “fitted as it were for the needs of another generation.” But within a few days he named
the new Maritime Commission and |
PAGE 11
Ind.
Qur Town
By ANTON SCHERRER
BROUGHT up as I was on the old-time newspaper—as a reader, I mean=I can't help noting the preciosity of modern editors, I don’t know how or when modern editors
| got that way, but I have a hunch that it, | too, is something that got its start during
| my boyhood.
Anyway, 1 distinctly recall that the
| old-time newspapers around here didn’t coddle their
| rivals the way the modern ones do.
They cussed them out. So much so, in fact, that it wouldn't surprise me to learn that the preciosity of modern editors dates from the day they stopped calling each other hard names, When I was a kid, the identification of the editor and his paper was absolute. At any rate, the modern practice of alluding to a newspaper impersonally was
| unknown, and it was all to the
| good, because we knew
exactly
what our editor had on his mind, MY. Scherrer
| which is something we can't always do today.
Apparently, the old-time editor had a lot on his
| mind, because I distinctly recall the pleasure of pick=-
ing up the Sentinel, for example, and reading that
| the editor of the Journal was a “liar’—sometimes an
| “unmitigated liar.”
Next day, by way of the Journal,
| I learned that the editor of the Sentinel was a “little
villain,” and once, I remember, he was a “little
| skunk.”
among the appointees was a retired | Rear Admiral, age 70, designated for | a four-year term. That seemed a | little odd, but maybe the Maritime |
Commission was different from the courts and didn't need youth so urgently. Roosevelt supporters just laughed that one off. Now, however, Roosevelt selected a 68-year-old Oklahoma man, R. L. Williams, to be Circuit Judge. True, he isn’t quite 70 and he promises to quit at 70. dition he proves the youthful quality of his mind wy pledging his support to the Roosevelt court plan. Also he is a Democrat. In addition to these qualifications, he is a Dis-
trict Judge and while Uncle Bob |
doesn’t have the judicial temperament, and is inclined to be irascible with long-winded attorneys in court, he seems to stack up as a successful judge. Even so, you would think that
asking his supporters to pause in the midst of ‘arguing against judges over 70 to fight for the confirmation of one who is right up against the age line. It's going to be hard to explain why a judge is no good after 70 but is just the man to take the job at 68.
TRAFFIC TOLL GAINS
awiz. | N. MEX. *B% +36% ' |
Percentage Changes in Auto Deaths from 1935 to 1936.
PAR OC
wo, 40, wa} +
National Estimate Entire Year
+47
Pedestrian Deaths
1927
1936 33% increase’
Other Motor Vehicle Deaths
1927
1936 64% Increase”
IOTOR VEILE DEKTHS 30,000
165% INCREASE SINCE 1924
25000
20,000
15,000
10,000 ones 267% INCREASE
5000 pret SINCE 1924
0 1924
2 28 ' XB NK ‘HB
The story of the fight against the rising auto death toll is shown
clearly in these graphs of the National Safety Oouncil.
Nineteen
states actually cut their toll between 1935 and 1936, though there were more cars on the road, traveling more miles. But auto deaths in other states increased so much that they more than offsef them. The percentage rise in the toll, however, is less than the percentage rise
in use of cars.
The top graph shows how each state fared in 1936 in the campaign to reduce auto deaths. The graph at lower left shows how pedestrians and autoists fared relatively in accidents, and the chart at lower right shows the relative rise in auto aeaths in cities as compared to the rate in small towns and on the country roads. The complete casualty list of about 38,500 deaths in 1936 is an all-time record, an increase of about ¢ per cent from 37,000 victims of 1935.
~-
¢
has |
In ad-|
| more behind us.
And so it kept going, day after day, until even I, a mere boy, wondered when, if ever, they would exhaust the nomenclature of appropriate words. You'd be
| surprised to learn the number of naughty words that | found their way into print when I was a little boy.
” ”
” Not Enough Words
F course, like all good things, this sort of thing couldn’t last, because there weren't enough naughty words to go around. It was at this stage of my childhood, I remember, that the Sentinel began reforming. Instead of using cusswords to clarify his
| meaning, the editor of the Sentinel began calling the | Journal the “Old Lady of the Circle.”
Looked at in one way, it was a literary triumph. Looked at in every other way, it was a dead give-away that our editors were slipping. Indeed, they were slipping in more ways than one, because just about the time they were getting over= nice in their choice of words, they began writing what they called “neutral” editorials.
” u ”
Something New
HIS was something new, because when I started reading the newspapers around here an honest= to-goodness editor would just as soon have repudiated his wife as to go back on his party. He felt bound to stand by his party just as ne felt bound to stick by his wife. We thought it made sense at the time. Well, apparently, the newspapers didn’t think so, because it wasn’t long after that some of the editors got so soft that they even printeq antagonistic articles, thus leaving the enemy to speak for himself. After which, of course, the editor just went from bad to worse. Maybe the editors knew what they were doing at the time, but I always felt that something priceless went out of Indianapolis when they stopped calling each other names.
A Woman's View
By MRS. WALTER FERGUSON
AS soon as possible after the equinox, folks in our part of the world venture out to sit on their porches. The first mellow afternoon sees them dragging rockers up from the basement. and by the time the trees have put on their gray-green vestments the swings and tables are all set up, with bouquets, knitting bags and tobacco pouches. Then we know for sure that spring has come. There's bound to be the regular to-ing and fro-ing before any feeling of summer permanence can be had, for a good many times right after we take up residence on our screened porch a late blizzard will run us in again. But not for long. Barring the usual minor rebuffs of Mother Nature,
| we're out now for the season. The brilliant red buds
of the japonica are already blooming and the forsythia is dressed in its golden gown. Trees—elms, oaks, maples—proudly show their baby leaves and the lilac buds are bursting. That's why the whole atmosphere of the neighborhood has changed. Spring is a gay, friendly time with us. The folks who live on porches are likely to be more
Roosevelt would have a care about | cordial than those who secrete themselves in walled
gardens or patios. And somehow one longs to share the scent of earth and the perfumed breezes with other appreciative hearts. So after dinner—or supper, as we little-towners still hame it—everybody moves outside where men and women call to one another as the dusk falls and children move In groups across the newly raked lawns while night closes in, bringing its fellowship and rest after the raucous hurry of the day. The sense of life's futility falls from us for a little while as we renew our souls at the moment when the first star winks in the sky where day still lingers. : The mocking bird is back also, if he has really ever gone. Soon our evening and morning serenades will begin. Jays, redbirds, sparrows are busy everyw where. Fat robins bob about on the grass and in the woods across the river a lonesome whippoorwill cries. ~The neighbors say goodnight, their voices filled with a warm friendliness. The long winter is once Spring is here.
Your Health
By DR. MORRIS FISHBEIN
Editor American Medical Assn. Journal
EPROSY once was the most feared of ail diseases, Today, in the United States, at least, it is unime portant as a cause either of sickness or of death. In Carville, La., the United States maintains a leprosare ium, and more than 450 lepers have beeen in this ine stitution since it was first established in 1921.
In 1926 only one person under 20 years of age died of leprosy in this country, and in 1927 and 1928 no one under 20 died of this disease.
The condition, nevertheless, is frequent in other parts of the world, particularly in Hawaii and the Philippine Islands.
Leprosy is caused by a germ which is carried from one person to another either directly or else on soiled articles, Occasionally, no doubt, it is transmitted by flies or other insects. Men are affected about twice as often as are women.
Leprosy will attack the skin and the nervous syse tem, producing ulcers and other serious manifestations. The average leper is not exceedingly dangerous to anyone who happens to pass him on the streeet. Ordinarily, close and prolonged contact with a leper, if it is held, is necessary to contract the disease. Nevertheless, there are records of doctors, nurses, and other workers with lepers who have become infected. The average person need give little, if any, con= sideration to protecting himself or his family from leprosy unless he happens to be visiting abroad in a territory where leprosy is prevalent, or is in contact with lepers in this country. Nowadays, most of our states have laws regulate ing the movements and activities of people with leprosy. Most of the cases in the United States, as has already been mentioned, are collected in the sanitarium in Louisiana. From time to time, new advances in the treatment of leprosy have beeen announced in various places, The most recent was the use of chaulmoogra oil, but most authorities are not yet convinced that this is of any real value in either the prevention or treatment of the Jaz. §