Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 27 January 1938 — Page 11

Vagabond

From Indiana = Ernie Pyle Local Youth Who Spent Only $90 in

Going From Indianapolis to Hawaii Is Seeking World-Wide Education.

ILAUEA, Hawaii, Jan. 27.—One day I was riding up the Mauna Loa trail with a Park Ranger. ‘Behind us was a car with some students from the University of Hawail, down here on vacation. We stopped

to look at an old lava flow, and the boys got out and joined us. One of them was a tall, thin boy wearing a biack sombrero. He looked at me and then came up and asked if IT wasn't from Indiana. When I said yes, he said: “I'm from Indianapolis. I used to read your column before I left there.” After I had congratulated him, and told him I didn’t know of a better one he could read, he told me something about himself. He's doing what a lot of boys would like to do—and could if they'd just do it. He’s getting himself a worldwide education. His name is Malcolm Conder, whose home is 2719 N. LaSalle St. He's only 18 now. He finished high school, and then spent a year managing a movie theater in Indianapolis. He had intended going to Indiana University, but somehow he decided to go wes’, young man.

He hitchhiked from Indianapolis to the coast. He

Mr, Pyle

got his black sombrero in Mexico. Then he traveled | to the other border. and sailed from Vancouver. It |

cost him $9¢ to get from Indianapolis to Honolulu. Last fall he entered the university He has a couple of little jobs on the side to pay his way. He wants to be a writer eventually, and is using the whole world as his preparatory classroom. Here he is studying “Pacific Relations.” This summer he'll work in a pineapple cannery to get enough money to travel further. He will spend a vear getting through the Orient and on around to Europe. And then another year in one of the language schools of Italy or France. And then back home—to shape a working career on top of this foundation of traveling wisdom. It seems pretty remarkable to me to find a kid of 18, out here in the middle of the Pacific, with enough ingenuity to choose such an unusual course of education for himself and then to work his way through it.

Turns Down Hike

And even more remarkable, he was planning on that day to hike to the top of 14.000-foot Mauna Loa, all by himself. I'd have gone with him except that I'm so smart already and couldn't hold much more wisdom. Not far from Kilauea is what they call the “Chain of Craters.” It consists of nine old craters strung in a row covering five or six miles.

Mostly they're just deep holes in the ground. But there's one that has an interesting story. It is about 700 feet deep, and half a mile or so across. It is very old, and the bottom is covered with trees and bushes. The sides are perpendicular. Now the funny thing is that lots of wild goats are living down in this crater. They were first noticed about 15 years ago, and the Rangers have no idea how they got there. The only way the Rangers can figure it is that a couple of goats must have fallen in, and somehow survived the 200-foot tumble, and set up a new little goat world of their own from which there is no escape.

My Diary

By Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt

Kentucky Radio Listeners Prefer News Programs, Weather Reports.

EXINGTON, Ky. Wednesday.—Mrs. Morgenthau joined me in Washington last night. We are off on a very interesting two-day trip. We found snow ali about us when we left the train at 7:30 this momning. Though it was cold out of doors, a warm Southern welcome awaited us at the station as well as at the University of Kentucky. One could not feel strange

for very long in the cordial and hospitable household of hosts like Dr. and Mrs. McVey. After breakfast we started on a visit to various new buildings erected by the university with the aid of PWA funds. They have made an extremely good record here on economical building. Dr. McVey attributes this to the fact that the engineering college has done all the architectural work, planned the buildings and supervised their construction. Wages are lower and the modern style of building requires a minimum of decoration. The law building seemed very adequate, and the student union, when completed, should be a most delightful gathering place.

Lunches With Coeds

The object of this visit is to see some of the activities which go on here during Farm and Home Week, and so we visited a hall where a group of men were gathered to consider some farm problem. Bees seem to be a very important part of agriculture in Kentucky for there is a building allotted to meetings held by beekeepers. Then I visited one of the women’s sections and. we went to lunch with the girls of the university in one of their dormitory halls. From there. we went to broadcast during which John Jacob Niles sang ballads to the listening-in posts up in the mountains. The university has sponsored these in an effort to tie up the more remote districts with the world at large.. They enjoy John Jacob Niles’ singing, but their chief interest is in the news programs and the weather reports.

New Books Today

Public Library Presents—

THEN the doctor tells Mr. Todhunter that he is |

doomed to almost immediate death by the extreme weakness of his heart, Mr. Todhunter decides

to make one large philanthropic gesture before his |

aneurism asserts itself. He will murder some person who is obviously causing unhappiness and confusion in the world. He finds his candidate for the crime and carries out his design. But to his horror, another man is accused and convicted of the murder. Hiring a detective to fasten the guilt upon himself, Mr. Todhunter engages in one of the most amazing court battles on record in TRIAL AND ERROR by A. B. Cox (Anthony Berkeley, pseud.) (Doubleday). No criminal with or without an aneurism was ever so hard put to prove himself a murderer. : : In the process Mr. Cox has written an entertaining characterization of a delightful gentleman, and an jronic study of the ways and byways of the English courts and the police, who do not believe in benevolent murders. Also, as usual, he has contrived a probJem in detection which is cleverly constructed and expertly told. . # = »

OUNG Robert Edison Fulton Jr. had just completed a year of study at the University of Vienna School of Architecture and had stopped for a prief visit in England on his way home. In a rash moment he inadvertently remarked to a group of friends that he was planning a trip around the world bv motorcycle. Ten minutes later he found himself presented with a motorcycle and irrevocably committed to the expedition. ONE MAN CARAVAN (Harcourt) 1s the narrative of his subsequent adventures. An ingenious delayed-action motion picture camera enabled him to illustrate his story with excellent photographs. Mr. Fulton asserts that “he travels the safest who travels alone,” and the fact that he met a friendly reception in almost every country would tend to prove his belief. In 17 months and 40,000 miles of travel, the author made the discovery that the very differences of custom and tradition which lead to friction between nations are the

8 very

Men

‘The Indianapolis Times

Second Section

| i

By Paul De Kruif

NEA Special Writer

hopeful one.

keys in the laboratory.

Three years ago the fight against the maiming death was a feeble one, not because the truth hunters were lacking, but only be-

in Honolulu. |

elements that add interest to

cause there was a dearth of

dollars ta pay for the monkeys without which their fight could not go on. Then, in 1935, the American people, celebrating the birthday of their President, joined the death-fight by contributing more than $200,000 to the support of their trutin hunters. When the searchers working under grants from the Infantile Paralysis Research Commission began their toil in 14 laboratories in our country, two key riddles faced them: Since infantile paralysis is an infectious sickness, can monkeys be guarded against attacks of it? If monkeys can be guarded, will the means of protection be safe and simple enough to test, in the field, against epidemics that every year threaten our children? ” =» »

N 1935 at the beginning of this organized battle there were formidable differences of opinion among the soldiers. There were microbe hunters who believed that the vaccination of monkeys against infantile paralysis was possible. There were others who denied this. What was the truth? Even if the deadly infantile paralysis virus could be tamed down into a vaccine to guard monkeys, would such a vaccine be practical for men? Why are the bulk of our children—even early in their lives —naturally immune? Is the immune power of human blood against infantile paralysis virus the true reason why most people can resist the malady? Isn't it a fact that infantile paralysis is uniquely a sickness of our nerve tissues? All right then, what.good would it be for you to create mere blood immunity in susceptible children by vaccinating them? Such were the doubts that tortured the truth hunters of the Infantile Paralysis Research Commission. Yet the Commission's Medical Advisory Committee felt that the fateful test would have to be made—if for no other reason than that of the distinction, the high authority of Dr. William Hallock Park, who believed that the vaccine devised by his assistant, Dr. Maurice Brodie, demanded a trial upon children.

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HE result of the hunt for truth about the vaccine is not a happy story. The scheme seemed simple. You took the spinal cord of a monkey dying from experimental infantile paralysis, ground it up and treated it with formaldehyde. That would check the deadliness. Then you injected this subvisible murder—

THURSDAY, JANUARY 27, 1938

Against the Maiming Death

Science Makes Fight to Learn Truth About

(First of Two Articles)

HE fight against infantile paralysis is a hunt for truth, and our truth hunters will be powerless if the people do not try to understand their struggle. The first truth to be faced is that these is no plague of man more puzzling and mysterious. is that enough science already is known to make the fight a

The second truth

Infantile paralysis can be passed from men to monIt can be kept going in monkeys under complete control of our investigators. To that extent the disease is not mysterious.

robbed of its fangs by formaldehyde—into children. In the 1935 North Carolina epidemic you would inject it into every other child under supervision of experts of the U. S. Public Health Service. . . . Leaving the uninjected. “control” children to bear witness, should the plague attack them.

It was a grim hunt for truth, and the co-operation of those parents whose children were left without the hoped-for preventive, was stirring. The epidemic broke out, that year, in July. The field test of vaccinating the children began. And already there were scientific « facts — discovered by others among the Commission's searchers—that were disquieting.

Drs. Park and Brodie had claimed that théir formaldehyde vaccine protected monkeys against small but fatal inoculation of the infantile paralysis virus. But at this moment this was scientifically refuted by Dr. E. W. Schuliz of Stanford University. The vaccine did not protect Dr. Schultz's monkeys! Dr. Brodie believed that immunity appeared in the blood of monkeys injected with his vaccine. Others believed it was the brain, the spinal cord, the nervous tissues you'd have to immunize.

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R. W. LLOYD AYCOCK and Dr. S. D. Kramer put Dr. Brodie's claims to the test upon those vaccinated and not vaccinated children in North Carolina. Alas! The immune power of blood did appear in children during that epidemic — but in just about the same number of those not vaccinated as those vaccinated. You may imagine the disappointment of the members of the President's Commission and its medical advisers. And their worries were not lessened when the Public Health Service experts reported that abscesses and other somewhat serious results had followed the vaccine in some of the North Carolina children. Now the Commission's advisory medical committee met to face the truth that the vaccine was a failure, and that all of the $75,000 had been sunk into this new hopeless venture. It was a bitter moment for all of us. It was Dr. Thomas M. Rivers of the advisory medical committee who made us all feel better when he said, “Well, anyway, today we've made science.” Dr. Rivers meant that we had faced the truth, and acknowledged it. In science, it is exactly as important to find out what is not so as what is so. Dr. Schultz's truth hunt had convinced him that infantile paralysis is uniquely a sickness of nervous tissues. Hidden away inside of nerve cells, growing inside those cells, the deadly disease virus is safe from any virus-kill-ing power that vaccines might give to blood. This was bad news for our endangered children.

ET at the same time this curious habit of the virus to live in, and to destroy only nerve tissue might be at the same time the weakness of this paralyz-

ing sickness, and Dr. Schultz was one of the first to see that. Infantile paralysis death cannot invade the spinal cord of a child by way of its blood. If the death had to sneak in by way of nerve tissues, then it had only one possible gateway into the body. That was by way of the delicate, hairlike endings of the nerves of smell, high up inside the nose. These are the only nerves that lie naked to the outside world. It was firmly established truth that monkeys can easily be fatally infected with infantile paralysis simply by pouring the virus of this plague into their nostrils. Mightn’'t there, then, be some simple way to shut this door to paralytic death? While Dr. Schultz was experimenting in California, a gleam of new truth arose in the Rockefeller Institute in New York. Drs. Olitsky, Sabin and Cox were trying to protect mice from the virus of a brain disease of horses. They could give mice this sickness by dropping the horse virus into the noses of these mice, and now here was curious news— The mice couldn't be given the horse brain sickness if you first washed out their noses with a little tannin. » = » ND now at the U. S. Public Health Service laboratory in Washington, Charles Armstrong discovered that he could guard mice from the fatal St. Louis sleeping sickness — simply by washing out their noses, before he inoculated them, with a weak solution of alum. . . . The trail of the hunt for an infantile paralysis preventive ‘was’ getting hot. Dr. Armstrong bagged his game: simply washing out the noses of his monkeys with this alum, protected seven out of every 10 of -

NLRB Faces Collision

Times Special ASHINGTON, Jan. 27.—The National Labor Relations Board today headed squarely toward a collision with a Federal judge over a closed-shop contract. The board has under advisement

a plea by a C. I. O. lumber workers’ union in embattled Portland, Ore., to invalidate such a contract between the M. & M. Woodworking Co. and a local union of the powerful A. F. of L. carpenters’ union. After the contract was signed,

nearly all the 515 workers in the Plylock division of the company went over to the C. I. O. group. The case arose when the company carried out the contract by discharging some C. I. O. members. The collision with the Ifederal courts will come if the Board upholds the C. I. O. contention, for Federal Judge James A. Fee recent-

ly granted the company an injunction which authorizes its discharge of C. I. O. men under the contract,

them from fatal infantile paralysis, when, a few days after, its virus was dripped into their noses. Now here was a preventive still more powerful: weak alum mixed with weak picric acid guarded - monkeys—for at least a week— protected nine out of 10 monkeys from infantile paralysis death. Quickly from the laboratory of Dr. Schultz came confirmation of the power of picric acid to prevent the infantile paralysis of monkeys, when this chemical was douched or sprayed into monkey's noses. And the truth was vouched for, too, by Dr. Olitsky and his comrades in the Rockefeller Institute, and by Dr. Aycock at Harvard.

Entered as. Second-Class Matter

PAGE 11

at Postoffice, Indianapolis, Ind.

The essential weapons in the medical army's laboratory warfare are monkeys imported—at $8 a head—from India.

Here was the greatest advance in the fight against infantile paralysis since the original discovery that the sickness could he given to monkeys. 2 8 =

OW, in the face of the 1936 epidemic that raged in Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi, Charles Armstrong went into the field to test the powers of his pic-ric-alum nose spray. Millions .of doses were sprayed into the nostrils of young and old. Dr, Armstrong found from his study that the nose spray was essential, harmless. But laymen cannot be depended upon properly to apply the nose spray. The endings of the nerves of smell are tucked away so high inside the nose that they cannot be thoroughly covered by spraying from an ordinary atomizer in the hands of unskilled, nonmedical people. In spite of this, Dr. Armstrong found some evidence that, where the spray was applied sufficiently early in the epidemic, there was an apparent decrease in the cases

hadn't tried it. Fy 2

of infantile paralysis occurring among those who had got the spray, compared to those who

” 8

EANWHILE Dr. Schultz kept hunting for new truth in his California laboratory looking for a chemical still safer, more powerful than picric-alum solu-

- tion.

In the winter of 1936 a weak solution of zinc sulphate, poured or sprayed into the noses of monkeys, was discovered to protect them—almost 100 per cent—for a month and even longer, against overwhelming, repeated inoculations of fatal infantile paralysis virus. In microbe hunting history there has been no more striking experimental success, in the case of-any vaccine, or serum, or chem= ical. The first of the two great key truths have been established: monkeys can be solidly protected against attack by infantile paralysis virus.

Next—Men and medicine mobilize against the crippling terror.

Side Glances—By Clark

= 1 Re

"Please, Jerry, the guests are beginning to suspect that there's noth-

ing wrong with the furace—that you re-just staying

UP. “8 mew oa el life. j

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A WOMAN'S VIEW

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson sy HAT are a teacher's responsibilities to her com- | munity?” asks a Pennsylvania reader. Goodness knows I wish I could tell her. i The person who is employed to]

learning, and train them to think straight. \ : She wouldn't be permitted to run loose in the classroom very - long, of course. The minute a schoolteacher acts as if she might have a couple of opinions of her own she’s almost sure to lose her job if she lives in an average American town.

I'm sorry this Pennsylvania lady got me started on this becaule I always go off on a tangent when I am on the subject of schoolteachers, especially women teachers and their mistreatment. I always end up by reversing the above question. What are the community’s responsibilities to. . its teachers? Having the floor, I'll answer first, hoping to hear from the rest of you later: First, a decent salary, paid regularly; second, freedom from political interference, and third, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Actually our women teachers have never had their constitutional! rights, They have no liberty of) person or mind. Moreover they are denied the pursuit of happiness! since for every normal woman hap- | piness must mean love, magriage and children. Here is the weak point in our educational system. Although the p ls must learn from books, teach-

| Jasper—By Frank Owen

a N

Copr 193% by United Feature Syndicate, Ine.

"What do you mean—Now smile?"

Our Town

By Anton Scherrer

Marker Is Small, but It Designates Site Where Indianapolis’ High School System Had Its Beginning in 1833,

IT looks like a little tombstone, not more than 18 inches high, but it's one of the grandest monuments in Indianapolis. You'll find it in the southwest portion of University Park about 40 paces east of Meridian St. and a little north of New York St. It’s the worse

for wear, but there is enough of the inscription left to tell you that it marks the site of the old County Seminary. It's quite a story. On Jan. 26, 1832, the Legislature authorized the town agent to lease University Square No. 25 to the trustees of Marion County Seminary for a period of 30 years with permission to build on the south or southwest corner. The other corners were then “out of town.” The act also carried a provision that if the square should be needed for a university before the termination of the lease, a half-acre, where the seminary stood, was to be sold to the trustees. Under this arrangement the old County Seminary was built in 1833-34. It was the beginning of the high school system, and the first optimistic sign that, come ' what may, Indianapolis was here to stay. Anyway, the building was two stories high, about 100 feet long from east to west, and about 40 feet wide in the main body. After the free school system was put in operation in 1853, the old seminary was turned into the first high school. It was torn down in 1860. When Austen Brown and some of the “Old Seminary Boys” saw the ruins, they got together, and put up the little monument you see today. The inscription on the stone refers to them as “comrades.”

Exactly 18,611 Customers in City

Things were happening to University Park. howe ever, before the old seminary was torn down. In the summer of 1860 the whole square was inclosed with a high fence and covered with an immense shed by a Mr. Perrine. He proposed making the park a meeting place for large assemblies, political or otherwise, and for big shows. When he got done, the place was big enough to hold 20,000 people which was optimistic, too, because at that time Indianapolis had exactly 18,611 cash customers. i Even more amazing was the fact that Mr. Perrine called his place the “Coliseum.” It opened on the Fourth of July, 1860, with a military parade, a band concert, and a balloon ascension by Prof. J. C. Bellman (no connection with the school). That night there was a grand display of fireworks. The Coliseum proved a fiasco, however. It was too big for the place. In a few weeks the work was all torn down. It took longer to cart away the Coliseum than it did to put it up. After that, in 1865-66, the ° city got possession of the park, fenced it, laid it out in pretty walks, and set out trees, some of which you see today. In 1888, a pair of pigeons ventured into the park. They have more to show for it than Mr. Pere rine—just look at the number of pigeons there now,

Jane Jordan—

Advises That a Few Friends Are

Necessary to a Well-Rounded Life.

DE JANE JORDAN-—I am an admirer of your column and hope you can help me with my prob-

lem. My husband and I are both honest, sincere, conscientious and fairly intelligent. Each earns a rather good salary, but neither of us is socially minded. By that I mean that it is an effort and nearly an annoyance to be entertained or, with rare

exceptions, to entertain our acquaintances. I have a few feminine friends with whom I enjoy having luncheon frequently and who are very confidential because they know I do not betray even semisecrets. But we never get together for sociable evenings - of mixed company. My husband and I drink, but abhor

Mr. Scherrer

| familiarity, vulgarity, salacious stories and malicious

gossip. We do not have a store of light chatter on | tap, which keeps us from being the life of the party.

Our most enjoyable time is when we are alone and we are perfectly content to go on that way; but I wonder whether that rather secluded life is good in the long run. Do you think we should literally force ourselves to be better mixers? Inherently we are more or less “lone wolves,” which may be a form of selfishness. We'd much rather be by our own fireside than out with other people. I am one of those whom others depend on, respect or ask for advice and assistance, but I don't fit in with bridge parties, teas, etc., because I don’t like them. Or is it that I don't like them because I don’t fit in? TE H

o » ”

Answer—On the surface your letter appears to be from a woman who has made what, for her, is a satisfactory adjustment to life. For a while your motive in writing puzzled me. I can only conclude that after all you do feel that something is missing. You have solved the problem of occupation. love and a few personal friends. The only thing lacking that is apparent is mutual friends for you and your husband. I wonder if he is the one who is not sociable and if it is he around whom your anxiety centers. Actually two people who work hard all day do not have the energy to go out much at night. Bridge parties and teas form a very small part of a working person’s life. Light chatter, while socially convenient, is’ not essential for a useful and productive life, It is not important to be liked by everybody or

| even a large number of people, but it is important | to be liked by those with whom we must live, work | or contact in business and private life, genial friends are necessary to a well-rounded life,

A few cone

These you have in your luncheon companions, Is your husband the one who has no friends?

A “lone wolf” stands at one extreme in life. At

the other stands the person with an excessive need

for the approval and affection of others. The normal lies somewhere between the two. I do not know what makes a “lone wolf” in all cases. Sometimes he is a person who has recoiled from competition, who does not mingle with others for fear they will excel him. An abnormally ambitious person often conceals the fact by withdrawing into a noncompetitive shell, He won’t show the slightest interest in a game he isn’t sure of winning. There is nothing to take the place of contact between human beings. We live in a world peopled with others and it is well to know how to get along with all kinds. This task need not keep one trotting to social gatherings hour after hour or putting up with people for whom he feels no kinship. But to exclude everybody in favor of the self is to live in loneliness and miss the heartening pleasure of being accepted by one’s own little group. JANE JORDAN.

Put your problems in a letter to Jane Jordan, who will answer your questions in this column daily. ‘

Walter O'Keefe—

OLLYWOOD, Jan. 27.—Ninety years ago a gentle -man named Marshall struck gold out in this country and the California gold rush was on. In almost a century there hasn't been another spending spree like it until the New Deal struck Washington. Of course, the pioneers were a bunch of dopes. It took all this time to find out that they dug the gold up out of the ground so that the Government could bury it again at Ft. Knox. Prices soared in the mining camps. Ham and eggs cost $5 a portion, but in their daffiest dreams the 50 never conceived of a Jackson Day dinner ‘bucks a plate, El . \ oof

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