Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 30 April 1937 — Page 21

Vagabond FROM INDIANA

{ ERNIE PYLE

(COLUMBUS, 0. April 30—S. P. Mc Naught looks the way a “dry” ought

to look, but he doesn’t talk like one. He

must be a 1938-model prohibitionist. McNaught is secretary of the Ohio

Antisaloon League. He goes about his business of fighting liquor, not with the gleamy eye and platitudinous tongue of a saint chasing devils, but with the sound logic of a businessman getting a job done. McNaught says repeal is in a bad way. He says it has been bungled, and that people all over the country (even wets) are saying that we're tobogganing back toward ‘prohibition. He thinks the liquor interests are digging their own graves. He says they're doing everything they were warned not to do. - “I haven't been able to bring myself to the point where I can gloat over their mistakes,” MecNaught says. “But we're going to take advantage of every error they make, just as they took advantage of ours during prohibition. “I don’t think prohibition is just around the corner, or anything like that. If the liquor interests get wise and straighten up the mess, I think it will be many, many years before we have. prohibition again.” “What should the liquor people do?” I asked. “Well, help get uniform state laws. And get a better form of regulation. And stop fighting local option. And stop putting liquor into every corner store and telephone booth in the country. Put it in the big cities where people are going to drink anyway, but don't shove it into every restaurant and crossroads store. Stop advertising it so blandly, stop pushing it on the public. Keep the signs and the influence where children won't be forced into contact with it.

Mr. Pyle

2 2 s ‘Public Opinion Crystallizing’

i HAT’'S what's crystallizing public opinion against liquor now—the way children and women are drinking.” “Just what are you working for?” I asked MecNaught. “Are you working toward complete national prohibition again?” McNaught said no, not by any means. He said they were working on a campaign of education, to get the people thoroughly aware of the bad way things are going under repeal, to create as many dry localoption districts as possible, to build the thing up till it reaches a point where another decision has wo be made, and then let the people decide. McNaught, the practical, and Dr. Howard Russel], the founding crusader; are working together right now on a campaign that Dr. Russell considers the great idea of his career. Here it is: The league is going to put on what Dr. Russell calls “court trials” in town and school auditoriums ail over the country. The defendant is “Beverage Alcohol.” The charge is murder. There is a prosecutor. Evidence against alcohol is presented. Depositions from famous football coaches are read. Great public figures—surgeons, educators, rich men—send affidavits. The defendant has a lawyer, although I must say from reading the accounts of one of the trials I wouldn't want him defending me. When the trial is over the jury goes out. The verdict, as you might suspect, is “death” for alcohol.

” ” ” Test Trials in Muncie

HEY have put on five test trials—getting it ready for the big time—in Muncie, Ind. Russell if any juryman had ever voted to acquit alcohol. He said no. The court trial is half of Dr. Russell's plan. For the other half he is going to revive the Lincoln-Lee Legion, an organization of people who had signed pledges of total abstinence.

/ Mrs.Roosevelt's Day By ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

HICAGO, Thursday.—I promised you a copy of the inscription on the tombstone in St. Phillips Cemetery. Mr. Edmund P. Grice of Charleston, S. C,, has been good enough to send it to me. It reads as follows: “To the memory of Nicholas John Wightman who was killed by a footpad on the night of the 12 March, 1788 aged 25 years. Peaceably returning home to his brother's house where he resided, the slayer met and made an attempt to rob him which he resisted and was instantly shot dead on the spot. His brothers with a small assistance the same night secured the murderer and six accomplices, being the whole of the gang that then very much infested the peace of the city and by their frequent robberies and attempts to set fire to houses kept the inhabitants in constant alarm. They were shortly after tried

and after fullest conviction condemned and

executed. Divine Providence ordered that a single button belonging to the coat of ths murderer, found the next morning on the spot where the murder was committed, by a child, the son of M. Edgar Wills, served with other proof to discover and convict him. This marble is erected by an affectionate brother and. sister : in memory of the virtues of their dead brother who thus departed. His soul rests at the mercy of the Creator.” I think in all probability this was the first, or one of the first, detective stories ever written in this country and I hope it will interest you as much as it did me.

New Books PUBLIC LIBRARY PRESENTS—

LWAYS stirred by anything affecting workers or the class struggle, Upton Sinclair has written his latest book on the civil war in Spain. “NO PASARAN” (They Shall Not Pass) is the story of a young American college student whose contacts with Socialists, Communists, Anarchists and other left wing political and labor groups arouse in him such a hatred of fascism that .he goes to Spain to fight with the Loyalists. Hazy about world problems and economics, Rudy Messer is a nice young fellow trying to get along in the ordinary way. He is disowned by his prosperous relatives because of his association with “radicals.” A cousin, Ernie, is a leader in the Nazi movement in the United States. Its senseless brutality swings Rudy even further left. He organizes a small troop and sails for the war. His cousin forms a group for the other side. Rudy is helping defend Madrid and has just shot down his cousin’s plane when the hook ends. Key line in the story: “Men do not fight machine guns with clubs and reaping hooks, women do not defend barricades with kitchen knives, unless there is a long story of suffering behind them.” ” E-4 ” student of Henry Adams will find THE LETTERS OF MRS. HENRY ADAMS, 1865-1883, ~ edited by Ward Thoron (Little, Brown), to be of unusual interest. In these letters to her father, Marfon Hooper Adams gives an account of the two visits which she made to Europe with her husband and of the three winters which they soent in Washington. Mrs. Adams’ keen wit and shi. wd comments on men and affairs enliven the letters. The editor adds iminformation in the form of footnotes and an

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Second Section

FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 1937

Models awaiting assignment in: the Powers agency. .

Models Hail John Powers Who Turns Beauty Into Gold.

Fourth of a Series.

By ALLAN KELLER

Times Special Writer EW YORK, April 30.—. “This man John Powers is a smart turkey, but he’s absolutely on the up and up,” said Ruzzie Green, the photographer of beauti-

ful women. The outstanding models, most of whom work for Powers, feel that accolade -is deserved. They put themselves in his hands, pay him the industry's usual commission of 10 per cent and climb the rosy path to fame that these earth-haltered angels seem to tread with so much enjoyment. In return, he gets them their posing jobs, goes to great lengths to aid them. professionally and lets them severely alone socially. . John Powers is satisfied to work in an office that is ten times too small to hold the beautiful women who besiege him for jobs. It is on the second floor of 247 Park Ave. and can be found easily by adopting the methods of old-time bee hunters. Stand in the lobby until your eyes are accustomed to the effulgence that stems from a constant stream of handsome women and then follow them to the door that bears the words, “John Robert Powers, Publication.” Ten to one he will be sitting at a little table in the anteroom, greeting visitors himself, and reversing the practice of most business tycoons. A long time ago, when he was a little less experienced, he hired a secretary to sit outside and interview the applicants, but he almost lost three or four world-beaters before he discovered his mistake, made the secretary sit in the private office and moved out front himself.

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The assignment desk in the Powers agency is shown above. The elips on the wall hold records of each girl available for assignments.

“Y HAVE to be constantly on the watch,” he explained, a little diffidently. “The phones inside ring only when I'm picking the winners.. If they're not the best the phones stop ringing.” Those telephones he spoke about sit on a low parapet in front of a huge board on which hang the appointment pads of 165 of the most beautiful women in the world and a few good-looking men. There are 17 cradle-type telephones. Behind them are four or five girl secretaries answering calls - from advertising agencies, commercial photographers and artists who want models to pose for them, or from the models asking where their next job is. This brokerage house that deals in beauty has all the outer semblances of a madhouse. Girls looking for jobs, mothers and fathers of girls looking for jobs, infant prodigies curled and garnished like Shirley Temple, and models waiting for appointments crowd

- the little rooms like a cross-town

bus. In and out of the crush Mr. Powers threads his way, answering a telephone, saying ‘no” politely and firmly to some girl who is sure she looks like Myrna Loy, or telling Frances Donelon or Margaret Horan or Dorothy Drew

what to take with them on a

modeling job.

OWERS' chief job is to see that all of his models are kept busy, but because Hollywood lures

some of his girls away and the contentment of married life snares many others, he always must seek replacements. In his office, in the restaurants, on the street, at the cigar counter, always he is studying women out of the corner of his eyes. It is far more difficult than it sounds. “If I were to stand on Park Avenue the rest of the afternoon,” he said the other day, “I would not, see a single girl with the features modeling requires. Pretty girls, yes, but not models.” In the 15 years he has been in the business—he was the pioneer —he has interviewed half a million women. He estimates that he must talk to 2000 applicants to get one girl with the requisite features for posing. Even then this girl does not necessarily succeed to a point where her chart goes up on the office board. “What I seek above all else is-a natural wholesomeness,” he said. “I do not want types nor do I want sophistication. I want girls or women who will look like what the advertisers want them to look like and it is not an easy thing to find.” Girls come in from every point on the compass. They spend their last dollar, often, in the gamble

PLAN TO MOVE LEAVENWORTH FROM FLOOD AREA HITS SNAG

NSTEAD of imploring “River, stay away from my door,” several cities and towns which have been hit repeatedly by floods are seriously considering the alternative of moving away from the river—or, at least moving such parts of the town as are subject to frequent dousings to higher ground. The proposal to move the town of Leavenworth, Ind, almost completely swept away by the Ohio early this spring, to a bluff over-

looking its former site, has been |

held up by Federal WPA authorities until the State or some other governmental unit guarantees $30.000. Governor Townsend, John Jennings, State WPA Administrator, and Russell Varry, Leavenworth Town Board president, have conferred on. means of raising the money. Governor - Townsend has promised his support. Leavenworth officials already have submitted a $125,000 project to State WPA- authorities calling for a program to provide employment for 100 men for one year. It includes construction of concrete sidewalks, a water plant and mains, sewage system and streets. Leavenworth is located about 70 miles up the river from Evansville, and its 1930 population figure was 418.

2 o 2

MILE BAHR, who offered land on a 400-foot bluff for a new town site, has deeded the site to Irvin A. Fahr, Crawford County Red Cross treasurer. Mr. Fahr is to deed to future buyers any lot sold in the town site. Indiana highway engineers are now at work surveying the lots. Mr. Bahr also deeded to the combined Leavenworth Presbyterian and Methodist Episcopal congregations a site for a new church building. There are two recent cases of towns which have been moved to escape floods once and for all—Colymbus, Ky. on the Mississippi River, and Hamburg, Aiken County,

¢ Columbus, after the great Misissippi flood of 1927, with the aid of $75,870.04 from the Red Cross, moved its houses, stores and business places to a bluff, 140 feet above the river. The Red Cross purchased the new town site and hired a city planner to aid in the construction of a new and model city. At one time Columbus was a prosperous river town of 3000 persons, At the time it was moved its population had dwindled to 600. Titles to the old location were transferred to the city, with the stipulation that the vacated land must not be used again for dwellings or for business purposes.

# 2 td

AMBURG, because of its location, had been subject to recurring floods which resulted in considerable damage each time. The Red Cross, when called in to aid the sufferers following the flood of Sept. 27 and 28, 1929, helped to the extent of covering the cost of new lots and the removal or rebuilding of dwellings. Aid was given to 29 persons and the amount spent on building and repairs was $8,510.92. The new site is about half a mile from the old site and is on ground sufficiently high to escape future rampages of the Savannah River. In many cases where the Red Cross has aided families in rehabili-

tation work after flood disasters, houses have been moved to higher land or new houses have been built This

in flood-proof - locations. method was followed in the case of the Colorado Springs flood of May 30, 1835, and in that of the PacificNorthwest floods of 1933-1934. Among other places now contemplating removal of all of especially vulnerable parts of the cities to higher or better protected ground are Shawneetown, the oldest city in Illinois, (population, 1930, 1440) in Gallatin County, o the Ohio River, about 40 miles below: Evansville; and Uniontown

and probably saved

1930, 1235). Uniontown is on the Ohio River, about 25 miles southwest of Evansville. The idea of moving away from rivers has been discussed less seriously in many other small cities. Projects of the kind have failed, in the past, because of divided public opinion. ” ” 2 T the time cities and towns were being founded in this country, location on a navigable stream was an important consideration. While sentimental ties hold residents in many cases, river-bottom location of the smaller cities long ago ceased to have commercial importance. Rail and highway transportation have so far surpassed river facilities that location on the banks of a stream has ceased to be of much value to most cities. The expense involved in moving a small town may he small in comparison with the value of protection from oft-recurring floods. The cost of moving business and industrial structures of such cities as Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Louisville to higher ground, however, probably would be prohibi‘tive. The larger cities will have to rely upon other protection, such as flood control works. Maj. Gen. E. M. Markham, chief of the U. S. Army Engineers, in a recent speech at St. Louis, said that an expenditure of approximately $750,000,000 would effectively harness high waters of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers: He estimated that the damage caused by the flood of January amounted to about half a billion. Army engineers claim credit for saying Cairo, Ill., during the recent flood, by means of the recently completed Bird’s Point Floodway near New Madrid, Mo. By diverting flood waters into this huge new reservoir, it was claimed, the crest of the flood at Cairo was held below the tops of the levees. Also, the Bonne Carre Floodway near New Orleans was operated for the first time in January, age

for fame. Gently Mr. Powers will ask them why they did not write or send their picture but they say they can. talk better than they can write. The marble corridor outside his office is a Via Dolorosa for thousands, a Glory Road for very few. Girls with plucked eyebrows are

sent packing, others with chorus- °

girl smiles fare no better. So highly specialized has the modeling profession become there is no place for the merely beautiful face. “Deadpan beauty” is a distinct liability. ” o ” R. POWERS has had considerable success with girls from Texas, Utah, Canada and from the deep South. He thinks it is because pseudosophistication has not made its telling inroads in these areas. Yet Margaret Horan grew up in Manhattan and there are many manikins who knew little of the open countryside until they went “on location” to pose in tweeds or riding habits. There simply isn’t any recipe for glamour. 4 “If you want to go to the top, don’t look like a model.” That is a Powers dictum with which none of the girls quarrel. He says the top-notch manikins do not have to show great acreages of silken-sheathed legs to “sell” a product, but that if they are “selling”: stockings, most of them make out all right too. “The highest-paid reception clerk in the city” started out on a Pennsylvania farm, looked casually down the cloistered academic vistas of Lafayette College and got a combination job as wardrobe boy and small-bit actor with Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, the English tragedian. He walked on and off the same stage with Elsie Ferguson, stealing no audible applause, and did a little acting in the silent - pictures when Hollywood was a sandy crossroads and the film industry centered in an area bounded by:South Brooklyn and Ft. Lee, N. J. He panned gravel in many different streams but didn’t strike pay dirt until he opened an office to supply models for the then infant advertising industry offshoot just beginning to “tell a story” with pictures. “I was enthusiastic,” he said, “and it worked out.” Some days he lunches at the

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.and picks

Entered as Second-Class Matter Indianapolis,

at, Postoffice,

JOHN POWERS

Agency Chief Declines To Mix With Clients Socially.

Restaurant Crillon, or the Ambassador Grill or at Giovannit's. Sometimes he munches a sandwich at the reception desk. But wherever he is, he is watching for a beautiful face. Some day he will find one in the street and it will take all of his genteel aplomb to put the Powers hall-mark on it without being arrested ‘as a nuisance. The girls are fond of him, in a close, friendly but impersonal way. They kid him unmercifully. The other day Fairfax Kirby, a sprightly, black-eyed lass, nearly drove him crazy snapping pictures of him with a candid camera. Every time he lit his cigaret or took a bite of his sandwich or picked up a telephone, she clicked the shutter. The other models tried to jockey him into awkward poses for her benefit and ail had a good time at his expense. But the last word is always John Powers’. He is the one who decides whether a girl has enough appeal to warrant putting her pictures —a full-face, a profile and a fulllength — in his yearly prospectus.

” o ” HESE books go to 1400 to 1500 advertising firms, commercial photographers and artists who utilize the sales value of pretty models. They go "all over the world. There is a tire merchant

in India who each year riffles through the new book and picks the girl he wants to pose for his product. Because he is so far away and so many things can happen to a model, he plays safe second and third choices. A successful model owns four afternoon outfits, two or three suits, at least two evening gowns, swimming togs, a ski suit and a riding habit. Sometimes she poses in her own clothes, sometimes in the advertisers; but she must be ready to appear at the studio in thirty minutes with the proper accessories for any type of costume. And as they work five months ahead of the seasons, they can’t buy their clothes on Union Square. ; Margaret Horan said she bought a suit for $125, not because she was swept off her feet by a sales talk but because she wanted a costume that would photograph perfectly. It paid her back in additional fees within a Week. It was a gray suit, tailored after four fittings until it seemed as much a part of her as her laughing Irish eyes or her trim, aristocratic ankles. She didn’t buy black because black makes photographers go mad. If they want to produce black in a picture, they prefer to do it with red, which photographs black. That's just one proof that Peggy Horan has learned her way around, working for John Powers.

NEXT—GIlamour on Tour.

'SHOOTS' FLU GERMS

Not as convenient as a handkerchief, but more effective in battling

colds is the apparatus set up at the Harvard School of Public Health

to combat “flu” and common cold germs lurking in the air.

When

the presence of microbes is suspected, the apparatus “shoots” them

with ultra-violet rays. W. F. W how-many- germs a

checking equipment to determine

‘any hing we don’t know about Muncie.

“rain, and fog is undesirable.

PAGE 21.

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Our Town

NOTHER point that future historians will ponder is the unique practice of modern writers of using the names of Indiana towns as a connotation for a state of mind.

It wasn’t so long ago, for instance, that a writer in Scribners made the point that if Colums= bus hadn't discovered what he did, like as not mos of us would be living in South Wales instead of South

Bend, Ind. A less scrupulous ! writer night have picked Ypsi- : lanti, Mich., or Canandaigua, N.Y., and missed the point entirely. And not so long ago, too, another writer observed that women nowadays bob their hair; that they smoke in cute tea shoppes; that they live in rooms dolled up like studios and that they drink standing up. These orgies, he said, came to us by way of the French Romantics and Greenwich Village before being adopted by the citizens of Kokomo. To be sure, the writer neglected to identify Kokomo as belonging to Indiana, bus everybody knew what he meant. And, of course, everybody remembers Robert and Helen Lynd's book, “Middletown,” (circa 1925) which turned out to be a juicy account of American condi tions. Well, “Middletown” was Muncie, Ind. It didn fool anybody at the time.

” ” # Lynds Write on Muncie ‘Again

I BRING up the subject today because the Lynds have written another book about our state mind, and it looks like another Indiana town. As & matter of fact, it's going to be about Muncie again, and in all probability it’s going to be a lot fancier than the first book, because this time it carries ths name of “Middletown in Transition: A Study im Cultural Conflicts.” Offhand, you wouldn’t think that a book with a title like that could get anybody excited, least of all, Indianapolis. But you never can tell. In support of which I cite the singular behavior of Neil Campbell, Walter Bonns, Edwin McNally and Stanley Brooks, who dropped everything last week to call on Mar= garet Bourke-White in Muncie. When they got thers they found Miss White in a funny little hat with an 18-inch-long red feather. It had anything in Indiane apolis beat, said Mr, Brooks.—

” ” ” She’s Magazine Photographer

ISS WHITE, if turns out, hasn't anything to do with the Lynd book, but she’s up in Muncie, anyhow. That's because she’s the lady who makes some of the photographs used in Fortune and Life. Seems that Fortune and Life got wind, too, that Muncie is a study in cultural conflicts. Be that as. i may, you can bet your sweet life that by the time Miss White and the Lynds get done there won’t be Well, it was abogaiime we were knowing more anyhow. 1 t mean to drag Miss White into today’s piece. All I really wanted to do was to mention my discovery ‘as something having the adumbration of a new law—something to the effect that the center of

Ind.

Mr. Scherrer .

. cultural conflicts, like the center of population, keeps

on moving toward the West and that now it has caught up with Muncie, Ind. Forty years ago, you may recall, it was in East Aurora, N. Y.

A Woman's View

By MRS. WALTER FERGUSON

% OTHER'S home! Mother's home!” It’s worth being separated from your children for a while to hear the gladness in their voices as they welcome you back. For a little while they are exuberant with joy, cutting their dear foolish capers. The mood doesn’t last, of course.. Before long they will be off again, busy with their own affairs, and se quickly that you are bound to wonder whether their happiness at sight of you can possibly be sincere, Well, it is. Nothing so spontaneous could be others wise. ae But one of the lessons a mother has to learn is that while she is a most precious possession to her family they expect her to remain fixed in one place, much as an article of furniture is fixed into its niche in the living room. To them she is a presence rather than a companion. : Their play is a hundred times more carefree, their voices ring with renewed happiness, their whole world is transformed when mother has been gone and comes home again. The knowledge that she is once more in her proper place, that she moves through the house as steadfastly as a planet in its orbit, causes them te feel that all's right with the world. For hours on end they forget her existence. They are not concerned with how her time is filled, whether she is gay or sad, idle or busy; it is enough to know that they can cross the threshold of the door and reach her. Somewhere inside the house, whose every cranny is known to them, they can visualize her— the picture back in its familiar frame. In that respect at least a mother is like God. I$ doesn’t matter whether she is being obeyed, or pleased; the important thing is that she is within reach if we want her, and will appear when summoned. Life is bright with her living presence. a And after all what is more blessed than the sense that one is so needed? Surely no rewards of mothers hood are sweeter than ‘being taken for granted, to know that merely because we are alive and at home our children’s hedrts are wholly at ease. This love and faith and dependence justify the existence of even the worst of us.

Your Health

By DR. MORRIS FISHBEIN

Editor, American Medical Assn. Journal

N the years that have passed since Francis Trudeau first introduced sanatorium care for the tubercue lous in this country, great progress has been made in the treatment of this disease. In the old days, one of the first measures to be considered in the cure was a change of climate. We are convinced nowadays that it is quite possible to find a suitable climate anywhere in the world and that the only advantage in traveling to hunt a cure is the benefit that comes from a change of surroundings.

In general, it is well established that open air is

helpful to the tuberculous and that it is most effective when the temperature of the air is cool and bracing. This method of treatment may be begun promptly and developed into a habit. The patient could res main out of doors during the daytime and, in many cases, sleep out of doors as well, although outdoor sleeping is mot essential if screened porches or open windows provide plenty of air. In general, cold air seems to be helpful but, if the: circulation of the blood is not good and the reaction to cold air is insufficient, exposure to cold air need not be a routine. ' In any type of outdoor life, exposure to dust, wind, Heat or cold in

sake.

“5

Ey

excess is dangerous to health. Warm, moist In Sra;

are believed to have a depressing effect, and cool, dry

climates a stimulating one. ox

People who are severely ill in the early or late stages of tuberculosis need not seek a change in climate. In ‘such cases complete rest in bed, either. at" home or at a nearby sanatorium, should be the first step in treatment. a Climate generally is now secondary in the treat<’ ment of pulmonary tuberculosis. ?

The question of personal contentment and satisfac

tion is important. If a patient is constantly unhappy

and homesick, he will not do so well in a sanatorium as he will at home. A sanatorium, however, is valuable: in regulating and establishing for the patient a suite’ _ abl be difficult