Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 10 July 1937 — Page 9

£3

From Indiana—Ernie Pyle

Water and Electricity Come High in Yukon Territory, Where ‘Salubrious’ Climate Never Is Colder Than —75.

HITE HORSE, Yukon Territory, July | 10.—White Horse has no water or sewer system. Every morning a man goes around in a cart and sells water for 6 ‘cents a bucket. He gets it from the river, up

above. A few people have wells, but they say the water tastes of old vegetable matter and isn't

fit to drink. 1 There are electric lights here, for which the citizens pay the extraordinary sum of 40 cents a kilowatt hour. In winter you need lights till 10 in the morning and turn them on again shortly after 2. But for a few weeks in summer it never really gets dark at all, White Horse resembles one of our Western cattle towns except that there are no cows Or CoOwboys. The streets are wide, and of gray gravel. The sidewalks are of planking. Some persons have lived in White Horse for 35 vears, so they must like it. The town’s 500-odd residents live in frame or log houses. There is lots of vacant space; vou hardly ever see two houses in a row. But it isn't & ghost town. White Horse has never been much bigger than it is now. It came into being because it was the head of | navigation during the rush to the Klondike. © And it still is. This is the transfer point from rail to steamer—rail over the pass from Skagway, steamer on down the Yukon. The same company runs both lines. There are two hotels here. One is the ordinary small-town hotel. The other is more modern, with everything panelled in unfinished pine, and the air of a hunting lodge about it.

Furnace Salesman’s Haven

In fact, it is a very comfortable hotel, except that the architect apparently came from Los Angeles and neglected to put in any heat. The idea, as 1 get it, is not to ga to your room till you get sleepy, and then you open the door and make a running dive | for the bed. I tried it, but being a tenderfoot I missed. and this ‘morning they found me under the bed, frozen, sheepskin coat and all. For a few weeks in the summertime it gets as high as 85 here. In winter it goes as low as 75 below. Last winter was mild; it went to 40 below only twice. People who live here say the climate is “salubrious.” The restaurant here is very good. There were four choices on last night's dinner menu—omelet, little pig sausages, moose steak, and roast caribou. Never having tasted anything so wild, I ordered moose steak. It looked like fried round steak, only a little thicker. It tasted more like fried rabbit than | anything I'd ever eaten. It was very good, although none too tender. . The moose-killing season is closed to ordinary people during the summer. But a few special hunters are licensed to kill moose for the butcher shops. There are lots of lynx cats around here. And now and then a bear comes into town and upsets a

garbage pail.

Dogs Affectiecnate. but—

Prices are fairly high. Dinner $1.25, and breakfast 75 cents. Almost everything you buy has to be brought from Vancouver or Seattle. It costs money to get it up here. There are lots of wolf-like dogs roaming slowly | ahout the streets. Some are a dirty gray, some are | brown They are malamutes. There isn't much serious dog-sledding around here | In the winter a few people cut firewood and sled it in by dogteam. And campers occasionally make 8 cross-country trip. And most of the Kids have a two-dog sled team. But that's about all. These malamutes are good dogs, and they have affection, but once in a while the wolf in them comes out. About once a year somebody is chewed up und here. Last winter a little girl fell down and a pack leaped on her and chewed her ears off before people could get to her. Most of the malamutes on the street let tourists come up and pet them.

Mr. Pyle

any more.

re —————————————————

Mrs. Roosevelt's Day

By Eleanor Roosevelt t Movie Made for Young Americans

ls Declared Lacking in Background.

YDE PARK, N. Y. Friday—Three very interestH ing people came to dine with us at the White House last night. Miss Martha Gellhorn, Mr. Ernest Hemingway, both writers, and Mr. Joris Ivens, & Dutchman and a most artistic and fearless maker of films. He is now working, I understand, on educational films in an effort to condense the best in many of the modern great pictures to a short form for the vouth of the nation. "Arter dinner the two men showed us a film which thev made. The interesting thing in this case is the fact that the picture was not made for personal gain. The profits, if any, are going to purchase am- |¢

bulances to help the sick and dying in a part of the |g papers at their desks.

world which is at present torn by war. In the picture, however, I think they presuppose too much knowledge of Old World conditions. 1 hope before it is shown generally there will be some way of bringing out the background, which is very alien to our own country. Here land is not as yet concentrated in the hands of any groups to such an extent that the people generally cannot acquire any for themselves. To me, another interesting thing about the picture was the faces of the men and women. Ne matter what their occupations were, farmers, soldiers, orators or village housewives, all were interesting types whom you feel you would like to study. The pity of it all kept running through my mind. When will we learn to talk things out and not go at each other's throats like wild beasts? I wonder how many people seeing “Wee Willie Winkie” will get the main lesson from it. It took a little ‘child's faith and logic to bring a dangerous tribal chief in India to an understanding with his ancient enemy, “The Soldier of the Queen.” At my New York apartment this morning, Mrs. Scheider and I breakfasted on our porch and soon made up our minds New York City had no attractions for us in summer. By 9:45 we were on the train for our trip up the Hudson River. When 1 said goodby to my husband last night, 1 suggested to him that he spend what time he could on the Potomac River, at least at night. His office is air-cooled, but he observes that the difference between the outer air and the air in his office is too great, for he believes firmly that though it may add to your comfort during the day, it is really better for you to have to endure the discomfort that nature

brings you for the good of your soul.

Walter O'Keefe —

HO says Hollywood marriages don't last? Look at Mae West. She's been married 26 years and this is the first spat she’s had with her husband. Mae probably denied her marriage all these years because she was afraid it might have hurt her career. Nobody would have gone to see her in those sweet simple girlish roles she plays if they'd known she was a married woman. Now her husband wants her to settle down or settle up. Mae's answer to that is that she lives alone and likes it. The whole affair is annoying to her. She's the type that hates publicity. Her husband certainly hits an all-time high for absent-mindedness. Any guy who is married to Mae and lets it slip his mind for a quarter of a century should be put under glass and exhibited at the world’s | fair,

\

Vagabond

haps not since the Versailles Treaty debate has a Senate battle received s6 much notice. ing into their fourth day of debate at noon today, are establishing records for attendance and attentiveNess.

fencing in the debate. and its implications and innuendoes are followed carefully by the Senators as well as

e Indianapolis

Times

Second Section

SATURDAY, JULY 10, 1037

Entered as Second-Class Matter at Postoffice, Indianapolis,

PAGE 9

Ind.

By John C. Polly

NEA Staff Writer

UGO, Colo., July 10.—There was a soft rustling, as of

wind through trees.

Then the sound of rain, hitting with a dull thud.

But there were no trees,

beat down.

no wind, no rain. The sun

Underfoot, the ground was moving, alive, crawling. It shifted back and forward, from one side to the other. We were in the heart of the Grasshopper Belt of southeastern Colorado, on the farm of Max Hutchins, 16

miles southeast of Hugo. As far as you could see,

the crawling blanket moved

over the ground. Hutchins bent down to the edge of what had been 50 acres of beans three inches above ground. He crumbled some of the baked earth to show us how the hoppers had eaten the stems below the surface.

Last Thursday Hutchins went to bed dreaming of getting a good price for the 20,000 pounds of beans the field would yield. Friday night he surveyed a field on which not a green thing showed. : “Not even a weed,” he said bitterly. Hutchins would have stayed to talk, but he had work to do. He had to spread poison so that the invaders would die before they could grow wings and ruin the crops of his fellow farmers in Lincoln County and farmers hundreds of miles north and east. You don't write about a grasshopper plague as you would a fire or flood. You can see the waters of a flood—the flames of a fire. But standing with Hutchins you could only see the shifting ‘earth and dumbly realize that ¢ver that hill and over the next hill and next and next, the destroying horde was marching on—over 1000 square miles in Lincoln County alone, and Lincoln is only one of nine counties in the Grasshopper

Belt. » n »

WE saw one ugly picture after another Tuesday around Hugo. We saw grazing land bare of growth as the kitchen floor in your home. We saw yellow fields, representing the sacrifice of time and body and slender savings. We saw main streets of little towns stained with the marching insect troops. You ask how many? So did we. And we got the unofficial estimate of seven billion hoppers in one 10-mile stretch. So perhaps it is simpler to say there are enough ‘hoppers to eat a six-acre tract field clean of every living thing in 2% hours. But vou can see ugly pictures and hear ugly stories of the invasion and dig deeper to find the

courage of dry-land farmers and ranchers who have licked a persistent drought and who will not be driven from their homes by all ‘of the grasshoppers in Egypt, Oklahoma, Texas and Colorado. They have the same quiet courage of County Agent Don McMillen, of Soil Conservation Superintendent N. B. Cool and of Agronomist Gale Warner.

n ” n STOOD talking to County Agent McMillen and George Schafer, who owns 30,000 acres of grazing land in the center of the little town of Boyero, southeast of Hugo. Schafer was one of the first of the big ranchers to realize the seriousness of the situation months before eggs hatched. “Who'll win, you or the ’'hoppers?” I asked McMillen. “We're doing all we can,” he answered. “We've got the finest co-opera-tion anyone could want. But we need more materials, more sawdust, more bran. A few days ago we needed more men. Now we need more materials.” There is co-operation. The Soil Conservation Service, the CCC camp, the Colorado National Guard, the State Highway Department, the county, the tiny towns—all are working hand in hand to beat back the invaders lest they sweep thousands more acres of land with the combined efficiency of fire, drought and fungus. The ranchers swear by McMillen and he swears by them.

” ”n HE crisis Will come by the end of the first week in July, according to McMillen. The hoppers pass through several “moulting stages.” The next stage is the sprouting of wings for the largest of the hoppers. We found several of the pests whose wings are out more than a quarter of an inch. And when those wings develop, watch out! As one bearded rancher expressed it: “They'll go, God knows where,

but they'll go fast and they'll be ®

Minton Orates, Perspires For Court Bill Cause

By Herbert Little

Times Special Writer

ASHINGTON, July 10.—Only once m & blue moon does the Senate put on such a show as the current court fight.

It has many spectacular battles, 0 a climax.

but most of them blow up quickly

Then the battle is either over, or else it drones away for dull months as did the Smoot-Hawley tariff fight of 1929-1930. {

It also has had many filibusters® and threats of filibusters before now. But usually they are the work of one man or a small group.

The court fight is different. Per-

The Senators, go-

There is a great deal of careful

he crowded galleries. Not many of he Senators are reading news- |

” |

”n ” [ATER when the filibuster starts

and the Administration seeks |

That phase of the battle might be

bicycle stage—except that it may be six weeks. The current phase, with the debaters earnestly presenting their cases, conscious that the public is not yet tired of the arguments, might be termed the Shakespearean stage. Robinson, Logan, Minton, Wheeler, Burke, and McCarran—these are the actors so far, All of them are speaking for the galleries, in the manner of orators, They use the gestures of the political platform, and the wide-carrying voice of the campaigner. ” » » INTON of Indiana, for the President's plan, and Wheeler of Montana, against it, are particularly vehement — so energetic

to let the opposition wear itself out| that before their second hour their in long hours and night sessions, | linen coats are wet through across the dreary period will set in.

the shoulders. Minton has the sweeping-arm ges-

termed the tug-of-war or six-day- | ture of the Indiana school of ora-

Side Glances

"

DUSRERRERRRS wi

The grasshopper horde stops at

pool, in the stricken area near Hugo, Colo, is literally alive with the pests. But most of them wiggled

Shown in actual vwize, ‘this grasshopper is one of the wingless type spreading havoc in Oklahoma. Entomologists watched for the development of wings in efforts to identify the pest. Some measured three and four inches in length.

hungry as a wolf wherever they land.” That's why McMillen and Cool and Warner and Hutchins and his neighbors are working like mad to accomplish mass murder before the marching regiments take to the air. It's not pleasant to imagine the destroyers cutting through the fertile fields of northern Colorado. But it's not an impossible picture. These migratory hoppers are credited with 10 miles a day—and it's a short jaunt between Hugo and Greeley at that rate.

= ” »

SPREADER, foremost weapon in the fight against the grasshopper hordes, is a trailerlike business that hooks onto an automobile or truck. The top of the spreader consists of a hopper, into which the mix is dumped. Be- >

~

tory. Wheeler paces across the whole width of the Democratic side of the chamber, feeling with his long finger in the air as if seeking and choosing his next word. Their arguments, however, seldom remain long upon the high plane of principle. Whether Justice Roberts is consistent, whether Chief Justice Hughes is guided by politics, what would happen if the late Thomas J. Walsh of Montana had been Attorney General since 1933, whether Justice Brandeis wants to be retired for age—thus the quarrel runs. Often the debate gets down to personal politics, as when Minton tells Burke, the opposition gadfly, that he will need to dig up some dead constituents in Nebraska if he expects to return to Senate. ® » ® OUSE members by the dozens | and scores come over to see and hear the show, filling all the unoccupied Senators’ seats and the couches in the rear of the chamber. The press gallery is filled— a rare event. The Senate meets at noon, and its tradition is to work four to five hours, without pause. Oratory can be wearying especially if it is continuous and argumentative, not the conversational discussion of the Senate's usual proceedings. In another week or so, after each

side has presented its case, the going will be harder. will be lengthened by Democratic Leader Robinson. The only consolation and comfort is this—the Senate chamber is air-

Heard in Congress— Rep. Dies (D. Tex.)—When I was a boy I lived on a farm in Hunt

rules. Well, the milk was just as ile th

The workday |

Governmental Forces Combine to Fight Insects

3 fo nothing. This

EN i Ss Se

on

Eyewitness Describes Crop Plague

their way across before a new batch took the plunge. A few drowned ‘hoppers mean nothing compared with the advancing millions.

A

Boas

A 50-acre field near Hugo, Colo, is shown here as Federal and State investigator found it reduced to a baked, barren waste by the grasshopper scourge. Thousands of acres of fertile fields suffered the

same fate.

low it are blades which revolve with the turning of the wheels. The mix drops from the hopper to the blades and is thrown 40 feet on each side. A typical batch of mix consists of 15 gallons of molasses, 10 gallons of sodium arsenate, 25 gallons of water and one pint of banana oil. (Grasshoppers are supposed to go for banana oil in a hurry.) Five gallon of the above nectar is added to 200 pounds of sawdust and 50 pounds of bran. R. W. McAllister settled in the Hugo country 27 years ago. He has seen times good and bad, very bad. Bux nothing as bad as the grasshopper advance. We stood beside on a rise on his place and looked across a wide draw. “See that hill over there?” he said and pointed. “A week ago that hill was as green as a lawn. What does it look like now?” It looked like a giant metal hand, white hot, had been clamped down on it. It was lifeless, dead ground. That was the ground that McAllister was counting on as pasture for some of his 200 cattle. ” » » HE ranchers in the infested areas are talking about moving their cattle. They'll have to unless they want a bunch of gaunt, starved animals, because there's nothing for cattle to live

on. The picture is no more cheerful for farmers. The corn on one farm was up 10 inches. Now you can find

| what's left of that corn if you dig | an inch below the surface.

Rye up six inches is the same way. Ditto cane and garden crops. No obstacle is too great for the hoppers to attempt. They were 15 feet up on the side of a galvanized iron building. The insects clung for hours to the side of the building, falling finally into a crawling mass six inches deep on the ground. They crawl over and into sacks of poison mix on the ground.

on ” ” UT regardless of what happens, there will be cheerful souls like C. G. Zimmerman, rancher, whose place is six miles south of Hugo. Zimmerman, a pioneer and ex-sheriff, was spreading poison Tuesday. He stopped work for a minute, wiped his brow and said: ‘“Durndest critters I ever saw. Why last night I left a trailer loaded with poison mix standing in the south pasture. When I got over there this morning, do you know what I found? Those hop= pers had moved that trailer clear down in a gully and hid it, along with a log chain. Durndest critvers I ever saw!”

PEAKING

OF SAFETY

¢ ~ WHEN BOAT RACES BOAT, ITS THRWLING

WHEN BOY RACES Boy, iTS FUN!

MOTORIST RACES TRAIN

IS SUICIDE

Our Town

By Anton Scherrer

Men About Indianapolis Once Wore A Pile of Jewelry, a Fact Brought to Light With PWA Worker's Find.

IFTY years ago when I was a kid, Indian-

apolis men wore a pile of jewelry, and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn some day that it had a lot to do with prosperity. At any rate, you don’t see men wearing jewelry the way they used to, and look where we are. Fifty years ago, a man didn’t think anything of lugging a couple of pounds of jewelry around with him. His watch alone, I guess, weighed that much. Certainly that much, with the big gold chain that went with it. But that wasn’t all, because with the chain usually went a lot of trinkets that bulked pretty big. There was the watch key, for instance. All watches used to be wound with keys, and they were the easiest things to lose unless you had them fastened tight to something. A mew key cost a nickel. That was the least part of the chain's load, however. The heavy load came with the trophies a man had collected during his career. e most interesting trophy, and wusuall the heaviest, was the emblem of the man's trade. The blacksmith hung a gold anvil or horseshoe from his chain; the bartender a Jeweled beer keg; the rail-

road engineer, a small locomotive: ; e; the conductor, a

Sparklers Were Hefty

Most of the men wore diamonds, too, weighed a lot. Frank Schuessler, the vor ay 4-carat canary diamond, I remember. Otis More rison, a conductor on the Vandalia, wore a 2% carat. August M. Kuhn wore a smaller stone—a llo-carat, as a matter of fact—but it was a honey. Sam Dinnen, who ran the “Fan” saloon at Washington and Delaware Sts., always carried a couple of diamonds, and so did George Rhodius, Fletcher Noe and Pearson, the druggist who started the cut-rate business around here. Ikko Matsumoto, the Japanese jeweler, had a diamond put into a front tooth. He thought he'd start a vogue that way but he never got very far with his idea.

Dr. E. F. Hodges, t00, was a collector of precious stones, especially of rubies. He had too many to wear at once, however, and so he kept them locked up. It was Dr. Hodges, by the way, who sat Mr, Matsumoto up in business. At any rate, it was Dr. Hodges who sent Mr. Matsumoto over to Vonnegut's one day, and told him to buy what he needed to start business, and charge it up to him.

Mr. Matsumoto saw just the lathe he ne when he asked Albert Off, the clerk, the a, 5 Off said jokingly (you know Al) that Mr, Matsumoto could have it for nothing if he could carry it off Mr. Matsumoto picked up the lathe with one hand, and walked out of the store with it.

Lost Is Found

Charles J. Gardner, I remember, always was weighted down with diamonds, too. He carried them around in a pouch like l00se change, and it was nothing for him to have some weighing 4 te 5 carats apiece. A carat cost $150 back in those days. One of Mr. Gardner's best diamonds was in a ring inscribed “Susan to Charles, 1887." Susan was his wife. Mr. Gardner lost the ring almost immediately, and never found it. In the means time, he died. Last year, a PWA worker digging in the neigh= borhood of Gardner's packing plant, ran across the ring. As luck would have it, he knew what he had aug up because 50 years ago, he had worked for Mr. Gardner, and he knew what “Susan to Charles” meant. That same night he called up Mr. Gardner's son. Sure, Mr. Gardner got his father’s ring back. The finder didn't want any reward, but he got one Just the same.

A Woman's View By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

Marriage Is Harder Job When Wife Has to Compete With Young Girl,

Fou discussions rage around the bridge table these hot days, provokad by the recent marriages of several famous middle-aged people. Differences of opinion over the outcome of the Windsor match have ended in a truce, as the realists and romanticists switch their debate to the case of Mary and Buddy Rogers. Perhaps because hope dies hard, the lovey-dovey group is composed largely of those in the late 40s, with their harder-boiled daughters making up the opposi tion. Almost to a girl, the latter express sympathy for Mary. To them, such a difference in years seems a lifetime. Knowing the man-hunting instincts of their kind, they can easily imagine the strain under which any woman lives who is obligated to hold the love of a handsome man a decade her junior. It's bound to be a tough job. Keeping a mate of your own age has become one of the major feminine tasks of the century. If you are ever privileged to listen in on the confidences of those who are married to rich or prominent men, you know that the old girl who has been able to ward off the attentions of lovelier ladies of tenderer years, considers herself worthy of a Distinguished Service Medal. In spite of innovations, however, the same old rules are in effect when it comes to building what is known as a successful marriage. And as always the chief ingredient in its making is a smart woman handling the affair. Age, tradition, background and race make little difference if the lady in the house has a good head set upon a stiff backbone. In spite of ringing denials, marriage is a woman's job, and it's the poors est-managed business on earth nowadays, mainly be= cause sO many wives lack the good sense or the desire or the intelligence to make it succeed. Here's hoping Mary Pickford Rogers can put it over,

New Books Today

“PYNESTIMONIALS originated in the Garden of Eden,” says Mark O'Dea. “And there, 100, came their first misuse when Eve started indorsing apples.” Mr. O'Dea goes on to explain that since then everybody in daily life has been a testifier. He points out that no one objects to sincere testimonials, but that the public felt deceived when the “paid testimonial racket” that reached its height in 1929 was exposed. But he declares that testimonials have a worth= while job to do and their efficiency can be restored —if they do not overshadow the product they ine dorse, if they are believable, if they are not silly. And this chapter on testimonials typifies the fairness with which Mark O'Dea treats each subject in his book, “A PREFACE TO ADVERTISING,” a collection of columns Mr, O'Dea has written for the

Mr. Scherrer

| magazine Printer’'s Ink.

Although Mr. O'Dea has spent most of his life in the advertising business, his work is surprisingly unbiased. As much space is devoted to the liabilities

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