Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 12 May 1938 — Page 16
\
£4
iti
\
Vagabond
From Indiana ==Ernie Pyle
With a Little Help From a Kansas |
Professor, Ernie Thinks He Has a
Housing: A Sleepy Giant Stirs
Way to Get Rid of Grasshoppers.
"ANHATTAN, Kas., May 12.—“Does a grasshopper know what it's doing?” I asked that of a man who has been intimately associated with grasshoppers for 27 years, and he said he’d been wondering
that same thing himself. He never has found out for sure. But it is his belief that a grasshopper hasn’t the slightest idea what it’s doing. The grasshopper man is Dr. Robert K. Nabours, head of the Zoology Department of Manhattan State College here. The grasshopper business is a sort of hobby connected with his regular college work. Not being a scientist, I supposed the only reason a man in Kansas would experiment with grasshoppers would be to learn how to eliminate them. But that isn’t what Dr. Nabours is doing at all. His work is merely to find out the mathematics of what ; happens to grasshoppers—in color, size and shape—after they're cross-bred down through eight and 10 generations. Grasshoppers to Dr. Nabours are the same as guinea pigs and rats to medical experimenters. He's interested in the result, not the grasshopper. By crossing vari-striped hoppers, and then crossing and recrossing down through about eight generations, he finds that out of every 100 there'll be exactly so many striped one way, so many another. and an exact number all through the curriculum down to where there'll be only three of a certain kind in 1000. It's always the same ratio. And this same table will apply to anything—humans, timothy hay, frogs, or Golden Bantam sweetcorn. Consequently, all that the crop scientists now have to do is follow this table, cross up various kinds of wheat, and in 15 years they've got exactly the kind of wheat they want.
He Could Use Cattle
Dr. Nabours says he uses grasshoppers simply because they're small and practical. He says he could use cattle just as well, except that it would take everybody in the college to help care for them, and wouldn't a journalism teacher lock funny roping a steer? To tell the truth, if I studied grasshoppers vears, I'd want to find out about their emotions— does a grasshopper have blue days; can a grasshopper sleep standing up, like a horse; how do they say “I love you”? Dr. Nabours has paid very little attention to these things. However, he has let his studies wander to the question of whether a grasshopper knows wherc he’s going. Or to put it in Dr. Nabours’ words, “When a grasshopper jumps does he jump with discretion?” The answer seems to be no. The grasshopper jumps in the direction he’s headed before he jumped. He doesn’t know where he's going to land, or seemingly care. Dr. Nabours has found that grasshoppers, after breakfast, are.inclined to jump, land on their backs, and then just lie there for a while, playing dead like a possum. That discovery gives me an idea for the elimination of the grasshopper menace to Midwestern farmers. Why couldn't you, through cross-breeding, arrive at a grasshopper that would eat his breakfast, hop on his back, and just lie there forever?
My Diary
By Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt
Globe Trotter, on First Airplane Flight in U. S., Praises Service.
flew down to next to a
97
wl
\ V Washington this morning and sat gentleman who introduced himself as a friend of my brother in Schenectadv. He, however, worked in the International department of the General Electric Co. and had just returned after 10 years spent in every part of the world—China, Japan, Africa and the last few vears in London, He was quite thrilled because this was his first airplane trip in the United States, though he had flown in every part of the world. He commented on the comfort of the plane and the excellence of the service and remarked that there were only two trips he could remember taking abroad which compared with this one. After my arrival at the White House, I caught up pn a number of interviews and tried on some very remarkable shoes which make standing for hours a pleasure. At noon, I went to visit a charity called “Opportunity House,” in a very poor section of Washington. A group of ‘women has been trying to start what might be called a settlement house, because of the need they have found among the children of the District of Columbia. Their funds are so limited that. even though they seem to be rendering some service, it is not what I would call meeting the real needs of that part of the city.
Often Refuse Milk
For instance, many of the small children from 3 to 5 vears of age, who come there in the morning from 10 to 12, sit down at noon to a lunch of milk and sandwiches. The settlement workers told me that the food thev were able to give, often was all the children had during the day. It is quite usual for the children who can obtain milk at home to refuse it because, little as they are, they seem to appreciate they should not take from other children who have nothing at home. I arrived home at 1 o'clock for a luncheon meeting with the continuing conference of Federal youthserving agencies. They have made great strides since pur last meeting in December and have established councils in four new states—Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia. This group shows what co-opera-tion can do. for by meeting once a month they learn what each Federal agency has to offer. This information is passed down to the state councils, who, in turn, pass it down to the county councils as quickly as they can be organized.
New Books Today Public Library Presents—
NOTHER prize book is Beatrice Bisno's TOMOR- ; ROW'’S BREAD (Liveright), which has won the Edwin Wolfe prize of $2500, an award for the best novel of Jewish interest, given in memory of Mr. Wolfe, former president of the Jewish Publication Society of America, by his children. The book is concerned with immigrant labor in this country, especially in the sweat shops of Chicago and New York. The story of these humble workers is presented, not as propaganda, but in the form of varying characterizations. Miss Bisno interprets the life and aspirations of her people sensitively and realistically in a tale of wide background and full of human interest. ® w Ww
ENEDICT ARNOLD, the traitor, and his wife, the beautiful Peggy Shippen, are the central figures of Irvine Haines’ novel THE EXQUISITE SIREN (Lippincott). The scenes are laid in Philadelphia and New York, with the final act played out at West Point, the American stronghold which through the treachery of Arnold so nearly fell into the hands of the British. Capt. John Andre, the British secret service agent, who was captured and hanged as a spy bv the Americans, was the gallant lover of Peggy and enlisted her aid in some of his dangerous escapades. Loved by friends and enemies alike, he is pictured here as & most honorable soldier and officer who refused to save his own life at the expense of his fellow conspirator, This story, a thrilling retelling of one of the most tragic and important events in our nation's early his-
tory, will be especially enjoyed by the historically
minded reader.
A
population
{ slum sections cost eight
e Indianapolis
mes
Second Section
(First of a Series)
By Gilbert Love
Times Special Writer
WV ASHINGTON, May 12. —Within a few months the Federal Government should be blasting away in earnest at the nation’s housing problems, using two “big guns” provided by Congress. If the new weapons do the job expected of them, nearly every man, woman and child in the country should be benefitéd. One of the big guns is being trained on the slums. And it is loaded with cold cash—half a billion dollars available already and more to come in all probability. This weapon is being primed for action by the United States Housing Authority. The other weapon is loaded with bait, in the form of Governmental insurance for private mortgages, and is in the hands of the Federal Housing Authority. The FHA has been functioning for several years, but last February the terms for its insured mortgages were made more liberal by Congress. The citizen who does not live in the slums, and does not intend to build a house, might not be able to see, at first glance, how these two Federal agencies could benefit him. But housing experts have a mass of facts and figures to prove that both slums and the general shortage of dwellings affect the entire population. Slums, they say, are breeding places for disease and crime that cannot be confined to the slum areas themselves. In Hartford, Conn., for instance, a survey found that 51 per cent of all tuberculosis cases, 57 per cent of all juvenile delinquency, 62 per cent of all adult delinquency, 58 per cent of all arrests for drunkenness and breach of the peace, and 72 per cent of all arrests for burglary and theft involved persons living in the slums. ” n ”
LUMS eat up the average cit= izen’s tax money, too, because the cost of providing them with fire, police, health and sanitary services is usually far greater than the amount of tax revenue they produce, A recent study in Indianapolis showed that 26 per cent of the money spent for public service went to the 10 per cent of the living in slum areas. Cleveland found that one of its times as much as it contributed in taxes. Birmingham officials estimated that they spent six times as much in nine slum areas as they received from those areas. In Memphis, it was found that one-fourth of all city services were going to the slums. Furthermore, slums tend to spread, surrounding and blighting middle - class neighborhoods. A man who owns property in a good neighborhood may find himself in a slum area in a few years. The average citizen has an even greater stake in the effort to revive private building. America is suffering from a serious housing shortage. One estimate, made last vear for a Senate committee, placed the actual deficit of homes at 2.397.000, and listed 3,265,000 existing dwellings as unfit for human habitation. un » n
O what? So those who rent their homes-—and most urban Americans do—must usually pay higher rents because of the competition for the available dwellings. During a scramble for houses and apartments in Pittsburgh this spring, many homes rented for more than their owners had asked, because families that wanted them “bid up” the prices. Also, because of the limited selection, large numbers of renters
THURSDAY, MAY 12, 1938
Ha
Here is a group of recently completed Indianapolis homes in the 1200 block N. Chester St. They were built under
Federal Housing Authority.
Entered at Postoffice
-
-
mortgages insured by the
J
Times Photos
A mortgage insured by the Federal Housing Authority also provided funds for the building of this brick apartment house, now under construction at Linwood Ave. and Pleasant Run Parkway.
must take anything they can get, rather than the kind of home they want. Families that can afford to pay no more than $30 a month must, in most cases, live in old houses, for very few houses in the $30-or-less class have been built since the World War. And some esfimated recently that 89 per cent of the population can pay no more than $30.
Even the man who owns the property in which he lives should be benefited to some extent by a revival of building. New homes on the tax books should tend to lower his tax contribution, and new homes in his neighborhood might bolster the value of his property. The most obvious benefit from a revival of building would, of course, be the employment created. It has been estimated that the slum-clearance program alone will employ about 134,000 men for three vears, directly and indirectly. Any real comeback of private building should employ many more,
OW did our ment manage such a sad state? Economists trace the situation to the World War. Building costs started to soar at, that time. There was a building boom in the 1920s, to be sure, but the » houses and apartments constructed were largely high-priced structures that could be bought or rented only by the relatively few persons with substantial incomes. After the depression started, even this type of construction virtually disappeared. In 1934 the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that only 22,063 homes were built in 257 cities that it studied. By 1937 building had come back to some extent, and an estimated 300,000 houses were constructed in the United States. But 300,000 was not enough. Estimates of the number of houses that should be built each year, to make up the deficit and provide for new families and the wearing out of old structures, range from 800,000 to more than a million units.
housing equip= to get into
The depression was responsible for the stoppage of practically all building for a few years, but the failure to build homes for the average family during the past 20 vears is usually attributed to increased building costs and, to some extent, to the preference of the building industry for the higher-priced structures. ” » »
HE scarcity of new housing in rent and sale brackets greatly intensified slum conditions, because those who
could not afford anything else continued to live in the older houses, The tenants grew in
the lower
number, but the houses did not, 4
and overcrowding resulted. Many of the houses became dilapidated, but they were still occupied because the tenants, as a class, could not move. When the Commerce Depart= ment made a study of housing conditions in 64 cities in 1934, it found that one-sixth of the dwellings either needed major repairs or were totally unfit for use, and that one-sixth were overcrowded.
Farm dwellings are even worse, The latest available figures, from the 1930 census, show that fully half the rural homes were in bad condition at that time. Only one out of 20 measured up to a minimum standard. That, in brief, is the housing situation. Nearly everyone admits that something should be done about it, although many of the experts contend that the Government has not chosen the right remedies, and some assert that the Government should not be in the picture at all.
NEXT=The chances for a building boom.
Heard in Congress
Senator Holt (D. W. Va.): Harry Hopkins and his publicity staff talk about the need to protect the morale of the relief worker. What happens to the morale of the WPA worker in Pennsylvania who is deprived of his right to feed his family because he votes wrong?
Side Glances—By Clark
Jasper—By Frank Owen
COPE. [9% Nix SEPUCE ING fle U.S PATSFE.
a a
S.-M.
"I'm worn to a frazzle. All morning I've had to listen to my hairdresser's domestic problems."
| | { | | |
ALBION
Copr. 1938 by United Peature Syndieate. Tne.
5:12
"You don't have to put that bell on her any more<—she can't hide with her new ribbon!"
TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE
1—Where are the Jura Moun= tains? 2—Who appoints judges? 3-~Name the first 3-vear-old to win the Santa Anita Handi sap. 4—-When did the 20th Century begin? 5-~How many centimeters are in two inches? 6—To which automobile manufacturer did Governor Murphy of Michigan appeal to establish a minimum annual wage system for labor?
7—What color is emerald? ” » »
Federal
Answers
1-—Between France and Switzer land. 2--The President, with the advice and consent of the Senate. 3-—Stagehand. 4—January 1, 1901, 55.08. 8-—Henry Ford. Green,
yr ASK THE TIMES
Inclose a 3-cent stamp for reply when addressing any question of fact or information to The Indianapolis Times Washington Service Bureau, 1013 13th St, N. W., Washington, D. C. Legal and medical advice cannot be given, nor can extended research be under
as Becond-Class Matter Indianapolis,
PAGE 15
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Ind.
Our Town
Government Seeks to Clear Slums and Provide Money for Private Builders By Anton Scherrer
|
| saying. First | she knew | those who still kept
| me for he told me that IT was the only one foi
No Wonder Miss Blanche Stillson Was So Positive She Had Seen the Book She Wanted in Indianapolis.
HAVE just heard of something almost approaching a crisis in the circle in which Blanche Stillson moves. Seems that when Miss Stillson was doing some research work recently, she ran into what literary people call a blind alley, and the only way out was to get hold of a book which she thought might have the information she was looking for Ordinarily, this department {isn't spilling secrets—much less, of divulging the source of smart people's stuff—but in this case I think I ought to tell vou that the book Miss Stillson was looking for was nothing less than the Egyptian “Book of the Dead,” a melancholy collection of chapters treating of psycholasia and the Osirian doc trine of resurrection. I wish 1 knew what Miss Stillson wanfed with a thing like that If T did T might stop worrying about the way she sticks her nose into evervthing. esoteric Well, when Miss Stillson was sure that nothing but the “Book of the Dead” would get her out of her difficulty she suddenly remembered that, once upon a time, she had seen a copy of the book, Right hers in Indianapolis, too. For the life of her, though. she couldn't remember where, and so she went in search of Nt. It was
in the habit of
Mr. Scherrer
a mighty methodical search, T don't mind of all, she called up every bookworm those who had pine-paneled libraries, and their collections in Globe-Wer« necke bookcases, Of course, she didn't find it, Even more disheartening was the fact that the people she called up didn't know what she was talking about.
They're Still Dickering
Nothing daunted, Miss Stillson tried Libraries next, No luck, either. At any didn't have the edition Miss Stillson wanted awful finicky that way), and finally in sheer desperas tion she looked up the Herron Art Institute. There in the least likely looking place Miss Stillson found just what she was looking for. Miss Greene, the lively librarian over there, let Miss Stillson take the book with her, and she hugged it all the way home When she got home and unwrapped the book, there on the fly leaf as plain as the nose on your face was an inscription--something to the effect that the thing Miss Stillson was holding was a gift to the Herron Art Library. And believe it or not, Blanche Stillson was the donor. At last accounts Miss Stillson was dickering with Miss Greene to get the book back, She's offered her a dozen books, the pick of her lis Pray, in exchange for it, but Miss Greene is sitting ght,
Jane Jordan—
Girl Told to Choose Husband Whe
Attracts Her in Prosaic Moments.
the Publio rate, they (she's
the way the story comes to me,
EAR JANE JORDAN--] months and we About two weeks after I had my ring I decided that I did not love him because he was so quiet
with A
to
went for eight
were engaged be married,
I am one who likes to be on the go all the time. He was a marsvelous dancer which had a good deal to do with the reason for mv going with him to propose marriage to me and I guess 1 thought it might be fun to string him along. Anyway I have been going with B and I think I love him. 1 just love to be with him. I am willing to give up many pleas« ures for him The other night 1 had a date with A again, and as we were dancing, he brushed my cheeks with his lips, I will never be able to describe the thrill. Why did his kiss make me feel that way? 1 know he still loves him
Then he was the first
He is 24 WONDERING
He's not just a love-sick school hoy
» ” ~” Answer—A voung, romantic girl in a state of loves readiness, is capable of feeling a momentary thrill for almost any attractive boy when the stage is 50 nicely set. * Many a girl has been deceived by ment into believing that in But reality must be faced. This is
vou turned down because you realized that all you had in common was dancing. Very little of life can be spent in dancing, but how does he stack up in more prosaic moments? How does he meet his ordis nary, everyday problems when there is no music to inspire him. A passing thrill means nothing in pars ticular except that you are young and healthy You find the other boy congenial without benefit of a romantic setting. You are willing to give up personal wishes for the pleasure of being in his company. It sounds like a =ounder basis for mars riage than the fomance aroused by the dance, Hows ever, he may not be the right boy either. I'm sure 1 don't know. When vou're young, love is so general that it seitles first on this object and then on that, Don't be in a hurrv to make a final choice, but when you do, take the boy who shows the highest degree of co-operation, who meets his responsibilities with courage, and who is still attractive without a romantic setting. JANE JORDAN,
such a love for the same
moe life, hoy
she was
Put vour problems in a letter (on Jane Jordan, who will answer your questions in this column daily,
Bob Burns Says— OLLYWOOD, May 12.--They say travel broadens a person, but I believe if a man spends his life lookin’ at a million towns, he won't be near as smart as a man that stays in one village and finds out what all goes on there, One time when I went home on a visit, I saw a fella sittin’ on a fence waitin’ to see the train go by. I started to brag about the thousands of miles I had ridden on a train and the fella says, “Well, me and you have got a whole lot in common.” He said, “T sit, on the fence and watch the trains go by and you sit on the train and watch the fences go by.” (Copyright, 1038)
i
Walter O'Keefe—
OLLYWOOD, May 12.-In Kentucky this yeay the Derby rates as the second biggest event, The big match race will be run off in August between “Dear Alben” Barkley, the Senate Democratic leader, and Happy Chandler, the present Governor, Of course, if Happy manages to get to Washing ton he'll be a social outcast, He's actually one politis cian who performed the promises of the platform he ran on, He replaced the Kentucky sales tax and reduced the state debt 50 per cent. Happy says the Administration tried to sidetrack him by offering him an appointive job with the New Deal, but he refused because he'd prefer one that's
permanent. Jim Farley hasn't made many mistakes, if any, in picking winners, Jim picked Lawrin in the winter
Kk. It remains to be seen whether he is oh a winner