Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 18 June 1937 — Page 15

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From Indiana—¢Ernie Pyle

Builds Streets of

Alaskan Town

Planks, Roving Reporter Discovers;

Wrangell Boy Has Yet to See Horse.

A/RANGELL, Alaska, June 18.—You know how we'll say of a Kentucky hillbilly, “Why, he’s never even seen a streetcar.” By which we imply that the fellow is = vackward moron. “Vell, here in Wrangell, I talked to a

~¢cmdsome high-school senior, bright as a dollar and full of hope and ambition and young knowledge, and modern as you make ‘em. He has not only never seen

a streetcar. He has never seen a train. And I can even top that. He has never seen a horse! For Wrangell is actown of the sea. There are only two ways to get here—by boat and by plane. You don't realize how much these southeastern Alaska towns are really of the sea until you get up here. : “You don’t leave the town unless you leave by boat. You don’t run over to the next town unless you run over by boat. There are autos here, but not a train within hundreds of miies. And it has been many years since there was a horse in town. Most ‘of you have heard of Wrangell. It isn't any bigger than Dana, Ind. That's what happens when you don’t have too much competition. ’ There are only about 15 towns in Alaska with a ‘population over 500. The biggest city is only 6000.

Mr. Pyle

Wrangell lies in a curve of an island. like a South -

Sea lagoon (except that it's cold). It stretches probably a mile along the bay front, and a couple of blocks back up the rise.

Streets Made of Planks

Wrangell has three streets the long way, and half a dozen or so the short way. The main street is gravel. _ There are lots of autos and trucks in Wrangell. 1f you met a fellow at the boat, and drove him over every inch of street in-town, you would cover about 14 miles. There is one movie. It shows mostly old pictures. Even the newsreels are two and three months late. It isn't because of the distance—they just wait till they get old and cheap. Wrangell has a very nice small-townish hotel and a handsome municipal light plant. It has running water, and telephones. No telephone book. Yeu just ring and say “Gimme Joe Green.” And the operator will say, “He's out fishin’ and won't be in till early tomorrow morning.” .

Wolves Howl Near Town

Sometimes on winter nights you can stand on the main street and hear the wolves howling over the ridge. . Every building in town is of wood. . Everything in town, except the lumber, had to be brought in by boat. Just think of it—bathtubs, furnaces, windows, school desks, beds—everything brought in from outside and assembled to make a town. There is one herd of cows, serving Wrangell’'s one dairy. There is a row of farms about six miles away, put this isn’t much of a farming territory. Alaska is wet—liquor is sold by the bottle in private stores. You don’t have to have a permit. No hard liquor by the drink is allowed. os Alaska has a number of™4 a 3

ustiiés. main ones are fishing, gold mifmg, fur farming, and

trying to drink yourself to death. Alaska is probably the hardest-drinking unit in our American empire.

Mrs.Roosevelt’'s Day

By Eleanor Roosevelt

Novelty of Broadcasting Worn Off; First Lady Feels at Home in Studio.

YDE PARK; N. Y., Thursday.—I1 was very much interested in the young girl who did the broadcast with me last night. 1 asked her if she fiad ever been on the air before and she almost gasped:

“Never!” While we waited to begin our radio conversation, I told her that I would look her up next winter when I went up to Cornell for Farm and Home Week. She is taking a regular college course, not home economics, so my particular friend, Miss Flora Rose, will not have her under her jurisdiction. I will be interested to see if a few months away from home makes much of a change in her. I never saw a more poised and sensible looking girl. Besides, she radiated health which, with good looks, makes a very attractive combination.

I°can hardly realize that I have only four more weeks left in this series of broadcasts. When I began I felt 1 was undertaking a tremendous task, but everyone has been so delightful to work with I have found it a very pleasant weekly experience and will be really sorry when the series comes to an end. We had a bite to eat and took the evening train to Hyde Park. When we drove up to Mrs. Scheider’s apartment the syringa bushes gleamed in the moonlight and the air all around us was perfumed by them. The police dog, who as a rule has very little use for me when Miss Goodwin, Miss Dickerman and Miss Cook are around, behaved as though he was very glad to see me and settled himself in my room, for the night. : As I was alone in one of the buildings, it was very pleasant to have his company, but I was a little annoyed when I turned over sleepily this morning and he at once took that for a sign that I-was ready to get up and play with him. Before I fealized what was happening, both paws were on the bed and his nose was in my face. Mrs. Scheider and I had breakfast in her living room and then started out to see what we could do to begin settling our guest house. It is an astonishing thing how much needs to be done to make even a small place livable. After starting two or three people on various jobs, she and I went off to visit my mother-in-law at the big hous€, buy some food, and start acquiring such necessary things as hooks, picture wire and electric light bulbs.

Later this afternoon I am going down to visit a young friend who is in the hospital in ‘Poughkeepsie. and I shall spend the night with Mrs. Henry Morgenthau Jr., at her farm near Fishkill, N. Y.

‘Walter O'Keefe —

7 OW that Jeanette MacDonald has married Gene Rdymond and with the Mary Pickford-Buddy Rogers marriage a few days away, it looks as if the depression is over in romance. " There’s no place where a wedding can be staged with mere hoop-la than Hollywood. The “ideal coupie” goes away on an “ideal honeymeon” and later they get an “ideal divorce.” Usually there are 10,000 people milling about the church, most of whom are former husbands of the “blushing” bride. The bride is crazy about home life and a big fam-

"ily, and she proves it by going direct irom the cere- * mony to the orphanage and adopting six children.

Smoke ‘Reflects’ Sound

By Science Service . ONDON, June 18.—To defermine just how air actually moves when a sound wave passes through it is an interesting use to which scientists put smoke. The tiny particles in the smoke are watched through a microscope-and the distance through which they vibrate is noted either visually or by photography. In this way two British physicists have been able to determine just how much air vibration is necessary tc produce an audible sound. Selection of the right kind of smoke is important, they remark, because the particles must be small enough to follow exactly the air vibrations and yet large enough for microscopic observation. Burning

magnesium gives thie proper smoke, say the re-

&

Among the |

- complex protein material.

The Indianapolis Times _

Second Section

FRIDAY, JUNE 18, 1937

Entered as Second-Class Matter Indianapolis, Ind.

at Postoffice,

PAGE 15

Genes, Hormones, Enzymes Studied in Rocke-

feller Researches Are Keys to Stronger Bodies and Keener Minds.

(Fourth of a Series)

MAGINE, as Hendrik Willem Van Loon asked us to do, a box that was half a mile long, half a mile wide, and half a mile high. The two billion persons alive in the world today could-all be packed in such a box., But Dr. Raymond B. Fosdick, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, gives us a more amazing fact to think about. Each individual of the two billion persons who will comprise the next generation to inherit the earth, will start this life from a fertilized egg-cell, the union of an

egg-cell and a sperm-cell.

These entities are so small that

they can only be seen with a high-powered microscope. If those two billion sperm cells might be packed into one capsule, says Dr. Fosdick, they would occupy less space

than half an aspirin tablet. The two billion egg-cells would occupy the other half of the aspirin tablet. Dr. Fosdick cites this to explain the importance of little things in the world, to explain why so much time of the = Rockefeller scientists must be ‘spent bending over high-powered miscroscopes. While the field workers of ithe International Health Division of the Foundation are studying diseases and public health problems in all parts of the world, two other divisions: of the Foundation, the Natural Sciences Division and ‘the Medical Sciences Division, are financing researches in many universities, colleges ‘and other institutions. These researches are primarily concerned with little things whose importance is in inverse ratio to their size. For out of these researches may come the knowledge which the field workers need to control a disease that now menaces the world. Numerous researches are directed upon the genes. These are the carriers of heredity. Why is it that when an egg-cell and a sperm-cell unite, the result is an individual. that resembles one or the other parent or each one partially in physical appearance, mental caliber, and emo-

tional ‘makeup? In other words, how does heredity work?

2 2 ”

EDICAL scientists now know that in each egg-cell and sperm-cell ate tiny threads of These are the chromosomes and under certain conditions they can be seen with a microscope. Strung on these chromosomes, like beads- on a thread, are the genes. One gene for the color of the eyes, another for the color of the hair, a third for height, and so on. Among them are 'sometimes, alas, sinister genes, the gene of feeble-mindedness or the gene of epilepsy. It is suspected, although not yet established, that there may be a gene which makes the individual susceptible ‘to cancer,

These genes are invisible beads.

Not even the most high-powered

microscope will show them. Yet in :

the case of certain insects, the fruitfly for example, scientists have succeeded in making charts of the exact location of the genes upon the chromosomes in the egg. This has been learned by countless experiments in which operations were performed under the microscope to remove a chromosome from the egg or to burnout a single gene with a sharply focused beam of X-rays. What's the use, you might ask, of performing operations on the egg of a fruitfly? The answer is plain. Out of it may come the knowledge the world needs to control epilepsy or cancer.

” ” 4 A Sonim fifld of little things in which the Rockefeller Foundation is financing investigations is the field of the hormones. These are the powerful drugs secreted in minute amounts by the

ductless glands. In the normal human being; there is concentrated in his thyroid gland about as much iodine as could be picked up on the tip of a penknife blade. Yet those few crystals of iodine spell the difference between health of body and mind and the exact opposite. The cretin, who lacks that pinch of iodine, if left without inedical treatment, becomes a weakmuscled, feeble - minded caricature of a human being. Behind the thyroid gland ip the neck are four little glands, each no larger than a grain of wheat. These tiny glands are the parathyroid glands. Surgeons of the 19th Century learned how important they were, for in those days the parathyroids were sometimes removed with the thyroid in the case of a goiter operation. When that happened, the patient died in frightful convulsions. Today it is known that the parathyroid glands control the delicate chemical processes by which the calcium, absorbed in the food, is deposited in the bones. A gland no larger than the kernel of a hazelnut is the pituitary gland located in a bony cavity beneath the brain. Yet this tiny gland is the master gland of all, secreting more than a dozen hormones that control growth, sexual development, the behavior of the thyroid gland, and other important ‘bodily functions. During 1336, the Rockefeller Foundation made 27 grants to aid studies of the ductless glands.

Side Glances

| By Clark

"No cars coming.

.. + shortcake without any exhaust blowing ont."

Here's a good chance to eat the” strawberry

Evansville «oeeeeees

i St. Louis 00sec 000 | St. Paul serssssscne

| White Plains, N. ¥:

Bending over high-powered microscopes and working with intricate instruments are.

scientists in all parts of the country, their work financed by the Rockefeller Founda-

tion, studying the important “little things” —genes, hormones,

One of these grants was to the University | of California where medical scientists have pioneered in the study. of the hormones of

the pituitary gland. Another grant went to Harvard University where the sex hormones are being studied. 3

Indianapolis Building

Up;

Survey Shows Costs Less er |

By L. A. : "NDIANAPOLIS is building faster but more economically than most other cities in its population class, a survey showed today April figures showed thas En 50 cities in eight Midwestern states, building permits had increased 43.3

! per cent over 1936, while the In-

dianapolis new building valuation figure was up 63.4 per cent. This city also showed the smallest increase in building costs, 2.88 per cent, as compared with a 21.91 per cent rise in St. Paul.

With acute house and apartment shortages in many localities, the building season of 1937 is already witnessing a construction increase of large, if not yet recordbreaking, proportions. And building costs are sky-rocketing along with permit totals. The appended table is based on data assembled by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, and shows comparative costs of intense interest to the thousands of folks, newlyweds or middle aged, who intend this year to build a new home or to refurbish the old place. Cost figures are based on current wage rates and current material prices obtained every three months from the same local contractors and dealers. Cost of a completed home is figured on these data for 25 cities, distributed from coast to coast and representative of every section of the country except the deep South.

2 “ 2

HE “home” for which costs are A given is a detached six-room house of 24,000 cubic. feet. Best quality materials and labor are used throughout. The exterior is

_ wide-board siding with brick and

Cost Per Cubic Foot April, 1936 $ 216 240 241 228 215 253 219 234 232 230 216 - 270 240 221 241 220 249 220 241 233 237 243 238

April, 1937 AlDBNY sieeeesssss$ 254 Atlantic City eeseee 279 BOISE: so ssssssssrase 259 Buffalo sccesessssee’ 205 Camden «cecesecees 244 Des MOINES ececeeses 269 Detroit 262 Duluth .250 242 .250 231 .297 247 .239 267 .248 275 .268 257 21717 .250 265

Fargo ..ececcccecses Grand Rapids ec... Great Falls, Mont.. Indianapolis Kansas City, Mo. .. Newark, N. J. ceeee Portland

Salt Lake City ee... Seattle a Sioux Falls, S. D. . South Bend ....... Spokane ...c.sveeee Syracuse .245

essscctocs

stucco as features of design; the first floor comprises) living room, dining room, kitchen and iavatory; the second floor, three bedrooms and one bath. Reported costs include all labor and materials, compensation insurance, allowance for

and enzymes. THIRD‘ went to the Phila-

delphia Institute for Medical °

Research where the thymus gland is under investigation. Here is truly an organ of mystery. Medical men are not even agreed that the thymus is a ductless gland although recent work of Dr. L. G. Rowntree in Philadelphia seems to indicate that it is. Periodically there are reports of

babies apparently smothered by.

clothing in their sleep. Many medical authorities think that this: cannot happen to a normal baby, that such babies suffer from a derangement of the thymus

| gland known as status thymoco-

| |

contractor’s overhead and trans-

portation of materials, plus 10 per cent builder’s : profit. |

Reported costs do not include cost of land or surveying: the land, cost of landscaping or providing walks or drives, architect’s fees, building permits, sales costs or financing costs. :

The house is not ready for occupancy, though it has all structural elements, including an attached one-car garage, unfinished cellar and attic, a fireplace, essential insulation, heating, plumbing and electric wiring equipment. It does not have wallpaper, or other wall or ceiling finish, its interior surfaces are not plastered, and it does not have lighting fixtures, water heater, range, screens, weather stripping or window shades. ;

8 8 s

ITH these specifications, the table shows that it is considerably cheaper to build such a house in the Midwest than on the Atlantic or Pacific seaboards. But wherever located, the house could have been constructed onetenth less expensively in April, 1938, than in April, 1937, All comparative figures relate to these two months. The average rise for the 25 cities cited is 10.34 per cent affording . a convenient basis for comparison. The following table indicates the total, and cubic footage, costs of building the house described in April, 1936, and in April, 1837. Per Cent Rise 17.31 16.19 7.43 11.39 13.42 6.12 19.24 6.65 4.41 8.55 7.21 10.05 2.88 8.05 10.59 12.77 10.27 21.91 6.43 11.18

Total Cost April, 1937 April, 1936 $6,098 $5,198 6,702 5,768 6,214 5,784 6,108 5,483 5,864 5,170 6,444 6,072 6,278 5,265 5,990 5,616 5,816 5,570 6,002 5,529 5,547 5,174 7.125 6,474 5,921 5,755 5,731 5,304 6.400 5,787 5,951 5,277 6,590 5,976 6,442 5,284 6,166 5,793 6,659 5,587 5,999 5,688 6,349 5,844 5,712 . 5,580 5,718

1

lymphaticus. Such infants live upon the edge of sudden death. The prick of a needle, the shock of a dash of cold water, are often enough to bring on a fatal reaction. No one .yet knows the role of the thymus in this condition, only that such infants have an abnormally large and swollen thymus. (The thymus

- gland is located in the chest.)

The Foundation also contributed $75,000 in 1936 to the National Research Council toward the work of the Committee for Research in Problems of Sex. “In all this work,” says Dr. Fos-

dick, f'science is standing on the

shore of a new continent. By and large, our knowledge of the control of hormone secretion is in a fragmentary state. What lies ahead, what secrets of well-being may be

discovered, what technique for the

shaping of human enality may be developed, only time and long patience can tell. “All sorts of unanswered questions lie before the investigator. To what extent is old age determined by hormone factors? What could be done by hormone control to delay its approach or mitigate its effects? What effect does parathyroid deficiency have upon the amount and composition of the bile? Is our incapacity to cure childlessness in some cases due ‘to an ignorance of endocrine factors? To what extent can the development of the brain be stimulated by hormone factors? How far will we be able to modify character and habits through the application of the techniques of this new science?” .

” o 8 LL told, the Foundation gave!

assistance to the amount of

$900,000 during 1936 to promotey

researches in the various fields of | experimental biology. Included! among the “little things” studied] in addition to those already men-| tioned were the enzymes. These also play important roles in the chemistry of the body. Without, various enzymes in the digestive tract, the process of digestion could not go on. Other enzymes within the cells that make up the tissues of the body, accelerate the chemical changes which take place in the cells themselves. Not only high-powered microscopes but many delicate instruments borrowed from the realm of physics, spectroscropes and radio amplifiers. to ‘name only two, are being employed in these studios of important “little things.” 3h

Next—The Problem of Mental: Health, ~ : 4

Qur Town By Anton Scherrer

Excitement Over Star Shower of i883 Couldn't Eclipse Ruckus That Webster's Speller Stirred up Here.

JNDIANAPOLIS was prepared for anything when it saw the big star shower of 1833, and so it wasn’t much of a surprise when somebody walked into town two days later with the first copy of Webster's Spelling Book. y It was a blue-bound book, the color of the sky, and it silenced even the skeptics who up fo that fime had réfused to see any significance in the bes

havior of the comets. The book came as near to wrecking our town as anything I - know of and it moved Jerry Johnson to remark that history would have done well to step with the star shower. : The trouble started with Joseph Reed (way back in 1821, when he began teaching Indianapolis Kids how to spell in the first school near the big pond where Kentucky Ave. enters 1lllinois St. Everything would have been all right had they left Mr. Reed along, but Mr. James Blake got it into his head that you couldn’t have enough of a good | thing, and so he started a spelling class of his own in the Sunday School where Caleb Scudder had his cabinet shop. ; : It didn't take Indianapolis kids long to discover that Mr. Reed and Mr. Blake didn’t spell the same way, and for 12 long years, until the time of the star shower, Indianapolis was divided into two warring camps—those who spelled like Mr. Blake and those who, spelled like Mr. Reed. Finally, when Webster's Spelling Book came along, instead of settling the controversy, it only aggravated matters, for it was revealed that Mr. Webster had a spelling of his own. And it wasn't anything like Jimmy Blake's—or Joe Reed’s, for that matter. .

Mr Scherrer:

Art Has a Beginning

All of which leaves me room to tell you some= thing about Samuel Rooker, our first painter. Mr. Rooker arrived in Indianapolis in the summer of 1821. Shortly thereafter, he met Tom Carter. It was lucky, too, because Mr. Carter gave Mr, Rooker his start. Mr. Carter built a frame cabin in the winter of 1821 and called it the Rosebush Tavern. The following summer he commissioned Sam to paint him a sign so that everybody would know what it was all about. » When John Hawkins saw Mr. Carter's sign he turned green around the gills. John ran the Eagle and was Tom's biggest competitor, at least in that part of the National Road between Meridian and 1llinois Sts. Sure, Mr, Rooker got the job of turning out’ a sign for the Eagle, too. :

Realism With Vengeance

In its way it was as good as the sign he made for the Rosebush... Sam was a realist and didn’t monkey with impressions and abstractions. He gave the Eagle every feather the bird was born with, and he was just as meticulous with the petals| of the Rosebush. Indeed, Sam’s rendering of nature was so good that the sparrows of Indianapolis wouldn’t|go near the Eagle, They were all over at Tom's place pecking at the Rosebush.

A Woman's View By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

‘It Doesn't Take Drink to Intoxicate Women,' Is Text of Man Next Door.

"HE Man Next Door went off on another tangent “last night, giving his wife and myself a curtain lecture that was a honey. “I'm sick of hearing you women talk about mode eration in drinking,” he snorted, taking another sip of his highball. “In the first place everybody kncws that the person who drinks to excess is a weakling or a fool, so why argue: the question? : But what about feminine excess in other things? Women are the worst criminals when it comes tc immoderate ine dulgence, and I can prove it to you. = “Their emotional sprees are as wearing' to the constitution as whisky. Everything they undertake is carried to ridiculous extremes. Take mothers, for : instance. I've known scores of them, and so have you, who remained permanently maudlin and besotted on maternal sentiment. Year after year, during the whole lifeof the child, they were unable to think straight on any question that involved their behavior as parents. Why, you both realize that the average mother is as crazy as a drunken sailor about anything that concerns her darling. -She’s an addict of something or other, impervious to redson. “Then look at the way you go about your reforms, You can’t take up a cause or a fad or a job with= out acting more addle-pated than a man who has had too many snorts. You are never moderately ine ° terested in anything. No, you ‘must be up to your necks before you can feel any enthusiasm. Look at the old girl who is a bridge addict. She believes she’s got to outdo Culbertson and his wife together, If she plays golf she can't talk anything but drives and putts. Or suppose she’s cne of your serious minded sort, with antivivisection or Yogiism| or the Kiddies in Kamchatka as her hobby. Was there ever such a bore? Why? Because she’s drunk on ‘the subject. Saturated, soaked, drowned in it, and she never comes up for air. “Even the domestic sisterhood who dedicate them selves to the home are generally so inteuse that they wreck their own nerves and those of the family by their passionate devotion to dustmop and broom. The plain fact is that the female of the species is always an extremist. She stays on _a perpetual jag of some kind during her whole life.” The last part of this tirade went in one ear and out of the other, because we women were already decp in the business of outlining: a program for next year’s Study Club.

New Books Today Public Library Presents—

ESIDES referring to the entire contents of suci magazines as Poetry,” the term magazine verse also includes occasional poems scattered through many periodicals of a general nature. A year ago there appeared the first annual collece tion of magazine verse and this volume was so suce cessful as a source for both pleasure and reference that it is followed this year by a similar volume. It is called ANTHOLOGY OF MAGAZINE VERSE FOR 1936 AND YEARBOOK OF AMERICAN POETRY, edited by Allen F. Pater (The Poetry Digest Association). Part I is the anthology of poems, arranzed alphae betically by authors’ last names, and Part II is a year= book of American poetry. This is a very useful section containing lists of volumes and collections of poems published during 1936. and lists of magazine and book publishers who publish poetry. ; The poems in this anthology are all of high merit and -seem to be well chosen. Of interest to Indianapolis readers are two poems by Lionel Wiggam,

| author of “Landscape. With; Figures,” and a former